Spring Festival Gala Ignites Robot Consumption Market as Companies Set 2026 Targets

The 2026 Spring Festival Gala has significantly boosted the robot consumption market, with several companies, including Yushu Technology, Songyan Power, Magic Atom, and Galaxy General, showcasing their latest technological achievements. During this event, data from JD.com revealed that the user traffic for robot products surged over four times compared to last year, with a remarkable 25-fold increase in users searching for “robot.” Additionally, the demand for robot rentals saw a substantial rise, with the robot rental platform Qingtianzu expecting to surpass 5,000 orders during the Spring Festival.

As robot technology continues to advance, companies are actively expanding into various application scenarios, including commercial performances, education, and retail. It is anticipated that 2026 will witness a growth in both order volume and delivery scale.

The Spring Festival Gala has served as a major platform for robot companies to display their products and technologies. For instance, Yushu Technology’s robot performed martial arts alongside children from the Henan Tagou Martial Arts School, showcasing complex moves such as flips and jumps. Their 1.8-meter tall robot, Unitree H2, also made an appearance. Songyan Power featured its robot products in a skit titled “Grandma’s Favorite.”

Magic Atom presented six humanoid robots, MagicBot Z1, and two MagicBot Gen1, performing alongside artists in the act “Creating the Future.” Additionally, over a hundred four-legged robots, MagicDog, took part in the performance, resembling giant pandas. Galaxy General’s robot, “Xiao Gai,” displayed a series of dexterous tasks in the New Year microfilm “My Most Unforgettable Night.”

The impressive robot performances not only captured the audience’s attention but also significantly boosted sales on various platforms. JD.com reported that within two hours of the gala’s broadcast, there was a sharp increase in searches, customer inquiries, and orders for robots. By 10 PM on New Year’s Eve, JD launched several products, including “Spring Festival Gala-style” robots, offering limited-time discounts. Within minutes, robots from brands like Magic Atom, Yushu Technology, and Songyan Power sold out. From New Year’s Eve to the fifth day of the new year, user visits for robot products on JD increased over four times, while searches for “robots” grew twenty-five times, with quadruped and exoskeleton robots experiencing multiple-fold increases in viewership.

The robot rental market is equally vibrant. Data from Qingtianzu shows that as of February 12, the platform received over 1,000 orders during the Spring Festival holiday. Qingtianzu estimates that its overall GMV for the holiday period will grow by 80% compared to the previous period, with total orders projected to exceed 5,000. The demand for robot rentals is following a trend of rising volume and prices, driven by standardized scenarios such as New Year visits, marriage proposals, and parent-child interactions, alongside the increasing demand for complex and high-exposure scenarios.

A report from Founder Securities highlights that the ongoing breakthroughs in key technologies such as embodied large models, multimodal perception, and precision components are enabling China’s robotics industry to transition from experimental concepts to feasible technologies, from prototype demonstrations to mass production and delivery.

Taking advantage of the Spring Festival Gala, various robot companies introduced their product highlights and recent developments.

According to Yushu Technology’s WeChat account, the technical highlight of their performance was the high-concurrency cluster control system for robots, enabling real-time coordination among dozens of robots. The integration of AI algorithms with 3D laser radar ensures that robots can maintain precise positioning even after vigorous movements. Founder Wang Xingxing stated that this year, the robots executed complex martial arts movements while rapidly changing formations, marking a global first for such high-dynamic and highly coordinated cluster control technology. He anticipates the target shipment volume for Yushu Technology this year to be between 10,000 and 20,000 units. Previously, the company disclosed that it had shipped over 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025.

Songyan Power noted that to achieve a flawless performance, their team spent a month overcoming technical challenges, showcasing their efficient engineering and systematic deployment capabilities. The consumer-grade humanoid robot “Xiao Bumi,” featured in the Spring Festival Gala, is set to be Songyan Power’s flagship product for 2026, standing at just 94 centimeters tall and weighing around 17 kilograms. The company plans to prepare for deliveries of Xiao Bumi by focusing initially on applications in family settings, such as companionship and education, before gradually expanding into new scenarios to drive order and delivery growth.

Furthermore, Songyan Power aims to expedite overseas product certification and expand into five major markets: North America, the Middle East, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Japan/Korea, targeting a market expansion of approximately 1,000 units in the second quarter of this year.

Galaxy General showcased robots designed for retail scenarios, presenting their embodied intelligent robot retail solution, the Galaxy Space Capsule Robot Store. The self-developed Galbot robot operates as a “store clerk,” autonomously managing welcoming tasks, multilingual interactions, product recommendations, order payment, precise item retrieval, and face-to-face delivery. A representative from Galaxy General shared that over 100 units of the Galaxy Space Capsule have been deployed in locations such as Beijing’s Summer Palace, Shanghai’s White Magnolia, Shenzhen’s Qianhai, Hangzhou’s West Lake, Chengdu’s Chunxi Road, and Suzhou’s Lion Mountain Square.

Magic Atom’s panda robot, which was showcased at the Yibin sub-venue, has officially gone on sale and has become a hot-selling item. This robot features a lifelike panda appearance and can maintain action precision and group coordination during dynamic performances. Co-founder Gu Shitao noted that the value of the Spring Festival performance lies in providing customized robotic and robotic dog solutions for enterprise markets, catering to the needs of more cultural tourism sites, commercial entities, and event organizers. Currently, Magic Atom has initiated deep engagement with key cultural tourism clients nationwide and is opening channels for rental agency and bulk purchasing, transitioning robots from being “technological collectibles” to “commercial assets.”

According to Zhang Miao, CMO of Songyan Power, the decision by multiple robot companies to participate in the Spring Festival Gala signifies a collective understanding of a key commercial milestone for the industry. Zhang expressed hopes that the gala performance would drive commercialization for these enterprises.

Dongwu Securities believes that substantial advancements in core robotic capabilities are crucial for the resurgence of robots in the Spring Festival Gala, marking a pivotal step in the transition of robots from laboratories to factories. In 2026, Tesla and leading domestic companies are expected to initiate large-scale production simultaneously, heralding a new chapter for the robotics industry.

Xiangcai Securities analyzed that the collective presence of robot companies at the Spring Festival Gala will not only enhance societal awareness and acceptance of robot products but also demonstrate through various intricate and refined actions that these robots are gradually becoming suitable for real-world applications, thereby laying the groundwork for future large-scale commercialization.

Industry insiders have indicated that 2025 is poised to be the inaugural year for mass production of embodied intelligent robots, while 2026 will see companies shifting their focus towards exploring commercialization in diverse scenarios.