Ticket prices have returned to the levels of 2019, and box office revenues have dropped to the levels of 2014: Where is the "bottom" of the National Day holiday film season?
Where is the "bottom" of the National Day holiday film schedule? This year's National Day holiday film schedule has given us the answer.
As of press time, the box office of the National Day holiday has just exceeded 1.1 billion yuan, and the cumulative box office in 2026 has reached 30.7 billion yuan; while in the same period last year, the two figures were 1.835 billion yuan and 43.6 billion yuan respectively. This means that even if the film market is given another *Zootopia*, the total box office in 2026 can barely reach 40 billion yuan.
If last year's National Day holiday film schedule was a throwback to 10 years ago (2015) overnight, this year's National Day holiday film schedule is a throwback to 2014 overnight; if the difference in service fee caliber is excluded, the box office will just hit 1 billion yuan. Coincidentally, 2014 was also the year when films such as *Breakup Buddies* popularized the concept of the National Day holiday film schedule. That is to say, after 12 years, the National Day holiday film schedule has returned to "the place where the dream began".
Where did this year's National Day holiday film schedule fail? 1) From a structural perspective, the factors of screening sessions and ticket prices have failed, and the fading of the audience's enthusiasm for the traditional main melody narrative of the National Day holiday film schedule is the external cause; 2) From the perspective of films, the overall competitiveness of new films is relatively weak, the film schedule is a testing ground for head films, not a cultivation ground for non-head works; 3) From the industrial perspective, the current lack of supply capacity is the result of active destocking in the past. Facing the negative spiral, the key is to ensure that resources are concentrated on projects that are truly free of shortcomings and can resonate with the public.
After the National Day holiday, the film market will enter the traditional off-season. The sluggish performance of the National Day holiday and the overall 2026 film market has become a fait accompli. Therefore, the more important question is: can the film industry survive? Can AI films save the theater film industry?
1
Falling again and again, is the National Day holiday film schedule already existing in name only?
Yule Capital once mentioned that among the common core film schedules, both the Spring Festival holiday and the National Day holiday have a certain basic market. However, the National Day holiday film schedules in the past two years are proving to the market whether the National Day holiday schedule is a pseudo-concept.
In terms of total volume, the daily box office of over 100 million yuan per day during the 2026 National Day holiday means that the film market during the holiday is roughly equivalent to an ordinary weekend with relatively high popularity; from the perspective of individual films, although the themes are different, films like *Detective: Traces* that have the support of a certain creator appeal, overall qualified quality and relatively universal themes can get a box office of around 600 million yuan in the National Day holiday schedule.
Daily box office trend of the National Day holiday schedule Data source: Beacon Professional Edition, as of October 6, 2026
From the data point of view, the number of audiences per screening is almost 30% to 40% lower than that of last year; although the market expectation for films is relatively low, cinemas have made full preparations. The number of screenings is slightly lower than that in 2024 but higher than that in 2025. The theater industry is almost "begging the audience to watch movies"; the overall film ticket price is lower than last year, significantly lower than that in 2024 and before, returning to the level of 2019.
The supply side has done its best, and the price side has also made concessions, but the audience still has not come back. This shows that the problem does not lie in the arrangement of screenings or ticket prices, but in the fact that the film schedule itself can no longer trigger the audience's decision to watch movies.
AI generated by Yule Capital
At present, the reduction of ticket prices can no longer provide additional attraction to consumers, but the rise of prices may drive away more potential audiences. Fundamentally speaking, movies are no longer an option for most consumers' "holiday fund allocation", but an additional item that will only be triggered when there is a hit film or a highly topical film.
In the past, large film schedules were regarded as the cradle of head films, providing sufficient soil for secondary exposure and word-of-mouth fermentation of head films. However, the year 2026 proves that this logic has been falsified: audiences no longer go to cinemas just because "it is the National Day holiday", but go to watch movies during the holiday only when "there are films they want to see". The film schedule no longer creates demand, but only tests the supply: the market will release huge box office potential if there is a hit, otherwise the market will be completely sluggish without hit works.
Comparison of daily box office of the 2026 National Day holiday schedule and 2025 Data source: Beacon Professional Edition, as of October 6, 2026 Note: The data in the table refers to the ratio of each dimension data of daily box office of the 2026 National Day holiday schedule to the corresponding dimension data of the same day in 2025
From the development context of the film market, the habit of watching movies during holidays is not an inherent tradition. The birth of the Spring Festival holiday film schedule started in 2016 when *The Mermaid* pushed the box office of the schedule to 3 billion yuan; the summer vacation film schedule started in 2015 when the box office jumped from 9 billion yuan to 12 billion yuan; the National Day holiday film schedule was not really ignited until 2019 when three main melody films *My People, My Country*, *The Captain* and *The Climbers* were released together, which laid the foundation for the main melody color of subsequent films in this schedule.
Since consumers can be ignited by the enthusiasm in the past, they will naturally leave due to the changes of current social trends. The audience cannot be "begged" to come back. Yule Capital has reminded at the end of the summer vacation that we should not overestimate the capacity and audience preference of any film schedule. What's more, the National Day holiday schedule does not lack alternative consumption scenarios: tourism, parties, concerts and music festivals can all replace movie watching. It is not that the National Day holiday schedule is no longer viable, but that the "film schedule" no longer has independent value.
Changes in various dimensions of box office composition of the National Day holiday schedule Data source: Beacon Professional Edition, as of 15:00, October 7, 2026
2
Insufficient market popularity and absence of hit works, why can't the National Day holiday schedule retain the audience?
Why did the National Day holiday schedule suffer a fiasco? Yule Capital will first draw the conclusion: the market was weak before the release, the competition during the schedule was insufficient, and the themes of new films lacked attractiveness.
The fact that the market was not hot enough in September has become a fait accompli. Last year, the film *731* distracted the audience's attention from the new films of the National Day holiday, but it also played a certain preheating role for the National Day holiday schedule. However, the backlogged film *The Hero of Dunhuang* released before this year's National Day did not have such good luck, and its cumulative box office so far is only 17.9 million yuan. The Mid-Autumn Festival film schedule "disappeared on the spot", which also laid a hidden danger for the low market popularity of the National Day holiday.
Box office trend in the week before the National Day holiday in the past two years Data source: Beacon Professional Edition
9 films were released during this year's National Day holiday, so the audience did not "have no films to watch"; but from the results, the audience "had no suitable films to choose".
Comparing the top 10 box office films of the National Day holiday schedule in the past three years, all the top 10 films in 2024 were films released during or near the National Day holiday. In 2025, films like *731* that were released in the off-season in September to avoid peak schedules began to appear. In 2026, the top 10 films include real summer vacation films such as *Welcome to Dragon Restaurant*, *Eight Immortals!* and *Odyssey*.
In addition, it is worth noting that 4 of the top 10 box office films in the National Day holiday schedule are imported films (excluding *Peppa Pig: Perfect Holiday*), which has never happened in the previous two years; even one of them is a re-released imported film. Audiences would rather watch the re-released superhero blockbusters than new domestic films, which shows the audience's impression of the quality of new domestic films.
With about 9 new films released in the same period, the competitiveness and competition intensity of the alternative films in the 2026 National Day holiday schedule are significantly weaker than those in the previous two years. The head films only get the minimum guaranteed box office, and the rest of the new films fail completely, which is one of the reasons why the National Day holiday schedule went down further from the 2025 level that seemed impossible to fall further. Without the feeling of "gathering of masters" and "strong competition", the audience's expectation for the National Day holiday schedule will be further weakened.
Top 10 box office films of the National Day holiday schedule in the past three years Data source: Beacon Professional Edition, Maoyan Professional Edition, data as of 15:00, October 7, 2026 Note: The box office of the film schedule refers to the box office obtained during the National Day holiday. The predicted mainland box office takes the average value of Maoyan and Beacon's prediction, and the re-released films only count the box office of the re-release period.
So are there any problems with the new films themselves? Take *Detective: Traces* as an example, this new work of Chen Sicheng maintained a stable daily box office in the first three days of release, and even achieved a reverse decline on the third day, indicating that there is no serious problem with the film itself. This is worse than a poorly shot film: the quality is acceptable, but it just fails to attract more people to watch.
Compared with the previous main melody blockbusters, *Detective* has integrated the characteristics of the era and amplified the suspense elements to reduce the burden brought by the grand narrative. However, this year's films *Spy Hunt*, *Secret Files* and *Detective: Traces* all have good word-of-mouth but mediocre responses, indicating that the audience who love era TV series and the audience who are willing to go to cinemas to watch era suspense films are two different groups of people. Or to say, people only miss the past days with many opportunities and prosperity, and do not want to re-experience the crisis in the past.
Daily box office of each film in the 2026 National Day holiday schedule Data source: Beacon Professional Edition, as of October 6, 2026
3
All strategies failed, what went wrong with the new films of the National Day holiday schedule?
What went wrong with the strategies of the new films in the National Day holiday schedule? Since this year's Spring Festival holiday, Yule Capital has mentioned that the film industry's schedule selection strategy is becoming more cautious and conservative. The 9 new films in the National Day holiday can be roughly divided into four types of strategies; each strategy can find successful cases in the same schedule in the past.
1) Head competitors maintain the common types of National Day holiday schedule, such as suspense films with orthodox narrative and comedy films that dominated the schedule in the earlier stage; 2) Action films with strong Hong Kong-style atmosphere, such as *Reborn 2* and *War of Detection*; 3) The family-friendly task is assigned to series IPs, including Peppa Pig and *Big Head Son and Small Head Dad* in this schedule; 4) Imported films and low-cost films are used as supplements, such as *Heart of the Beast* and *Scent of Desire*.
But the problem is that the genre itself is no longer enough to constitute the attraction for the audience to enter the cinema. The target box office of head films has dropped to around 500 million yuan; action films start and end quietly, *Reborn 2*, which was released two days later, opened flat and went low; the