Free laundry, car washing services, and even transportation fee reimbursement — just how extreme are internet cafes nowadays?

What is the hottest industry in 2026?

The answer could be: Internet cafes.

Some may think that Chapingjun is joking. In this day and age, young people barely use computers anymore. It would be a good thing if internet cafes do not go bankrupt, let alone become extremely popular?

Hold on, take a look at these posts first...

"I haven't played team games together for a long time. I visited three internet cafes in a row but all of them were fully occupied".

"Full house even at 5 a.m".

"During peak hours like holidays, you can't get a seat at all without a reservation".

You can't grab a computer when you go to an internet cafe. What year is it now...

There is something even more shocking.

Amid the discussions from netizens, Chapingjun found that current internet cafes have evolved to a whole new level.

The internet cafes in my memory were full of sunflower seed shells on the ground, with simple decoration. As long as there was a venue with a row of computers, the business could be started.

Now, they look like this ↓

The single private booth is decorated like a home e-sports room, and some even put a bed for people to rest ↓

Wait a minute! How can you get on the bed without taking a shower!

Well, this type of internet cafe comes with free shower rooms, which are equipped with toiletries and hair dryers.

You can even get free shoe shining, laundry and car washing services.

The hardware configuration is also astonishing: the graphics card is 5080, the CPU is 9800X3D, and the monitor is ZOWIE GEAR.

These three pieces alone cost around 24,000 yuan recently, which is enough to buy 4 MacBook Neo laptops (priced from 5499 yuan) with money left over.

But!!!

What shocks Chapingjun most is that in some internet cafes, the freshly cut and stir-fried dishes are actually cooked by the front desk staff in the back kitchen.

They converted the small compartment behind the front desk into a small kitchen, fully equipped with frying pans, range hoods and other facilities.

Where on earth have I come to?

Today's internet cafes have fully aroused Chapingjun's curiosity and are worth in-depth exploration. After consulting industry veterans and sorting out relevant information, Chapingjun has gained a lot of insights.

Today let's talk about internet cafes~

(In fact, the division is very detailed now, including internet cafes, cybercafes, e-sports halls, e-sports complexes, etc. For the convenience of everyone's understanding, this article collectively refers to all of them as internet cafes)

The argument that internet cafes have achieved great success has emerged in the past year or so.

But the starting point of the revival is —— 2023.

When internet cafe owners, industry associations and supply chain manufacturers talk about internet cafes, they all mention this year without prior consultation.

As @Uncle Zhai's Digital World, who has been in the industry for many years, recalls, the number of people who came to him for consultation in 2023 was the largest: those who did not have a store wanted to open one, and those who already had a store wanted to expand. For a period of time, there were people coming for consultation almost every day.

On the contrary, in 2026, which seems to be in full swing, fewer people come to ask for advice because the entry threshold has become higher.

Why did internet cafes become popular again in this year?

First, the core driving force for the revival of internet cafes: PC games are thriving again.

Ma Yunxiang, President of Yiyang Internet Access Service Association and CEO of Hunan Engine Interactive Entertainment, told Chapingjun, "Internet cafes follow the same logic as cinemas. Whether a cinema has a good year depends on whether there are blockbusters in the upstream. Cinemas are just places to host film content, and the same goes for internet cafes".

Internet cafes seem to be selling access to computers, but it is games that determine the number of customers.

Therefore, this industry has been rising and falling along with games for many years.

The last downturn started in 2016, when mobile games became extremely popular. *Honor of Kings* had more than 200 million registered users less than one year after its official launch, which was more than the number of Chinese stock investors.

The number of Chinese stock investors did not exceed 200 million until 2022

Using the cinema metaphor again: when everyone is watching short dramas on their mobile phones, the attractiveness of cinemas is sharply diluted.

At that time, a cold chill pervaded the internet cafe industry. Everyone thought that a large number of people had been taken away from their computers, and once the entertainment method was changed, they might never come back.

Until *PUBG* gave the internet cafe industry a strong boost.

This rapidly popular FPS game (First-Person Shooter game) became a phenomenal hit, and produced two major impacts.

First, the game optimization was far from excellent, which made gamers realize that some games can only give you the right vibe when you play them in an internet cafe, and queues appeared in internet cafes again.

Second, internet cafe owners found that this game could not run smoothly even on the old machines in their cafes. With poor customer experience, customers would not want to come back, so the hardware arms race kicked off.

At that time, there were many reports saying that under this *PUBG* craze, stores that updated their configurations quickly had better business.

Some people may not understand: just update the configuration of your own computer, why do you have to go to an internet cafe?

Because the mining boom was still ongoing at that time, and hardware had a premium. For many people, ordinary computers can run most regular games. Updating a full set of equipment just for *PUBG* is far less reliable and affordable than going to an internet cafe.

What's more, internet cafes are closely connected with games, and many games have exclusive privileges in internet cafes, which is completely different from the experience at home.

 

So who is saving internet cafes at this stage?

*League of Legends*, *Valorant*, *Delta Action*, *CrossFire*, *Naraka: Bladepoint*.

Ma Yunxiang, President of Yiyang Internet Access Service Association, feels that "the revival of internet cafes in recent years is largely driven by new users brought by *Valorant* (officially launched in 2023) and *Delta Action* (officially launched in 2024). In internet cafes, these two games plus *League of Legends* account for more than 80% of total game play time".

According to statistics from Shunwang Technology, among the popular games in current internet cafes, FPS games account for more than 50% all year round.

As mentioned earlier, FPS games have high requirements for computer configuration. Better hardware can create obvious gaps in gaming experience, which will drive people to internet cafes. They are naturally the savior of internet cafes.

But games are not the only reason for this round of great revival of internet cafes.

The popularity of *PUBG* only extended the life of the industry for "a second". In fact, from 2016 to 2023, the overall trend of the industry was still declining, and the number of internet cafes dropped sharply from 152,000 to 77,000, almost cut in half.

However, in this round of great revival of internet cafes, the number of people opening internet cafes has suddenly increased, and the industry report uses the term large-scale growth.