Netflix’s What We Watched Report: Netflix animated sensation KPop Demon Hunters has once again proved it can last, ranking as the platform fourth most-viewed film for the first half of 2026 even though it first showed up more than a year earlier. The update, came out on July 16 via Netflix latest “What We Watched” engagement report and it really points to how the film keeps finding new audiences globally long after the premiere.
Per Netflix engagement numbers, KPop Demon Hunters pulled in around 130 million views across January-June 2026, landing it behind only War Machine (147 million views), The Rip (136 million) and the other animated feature Swapped (131 million). Netflix noted that the film secured the No. 4 spot despite having debuted over a year ago. Netflix calculates “views” by dividing the total hours watched by a title’s runtime, a metric the company uses across its biannual engagement reports.
The latest report builds on an extraordinary performance in the second half of 2025, when KPop Demon Hunters became Netflix’s most-watched title over a six-month period with 482 million views, setting a platform record.
Animated movies are considered as one of its fastest-growing categories in the first half of 2026. Alongside Swapped, KPop Demon Hunters helped demonstrate that animated originals can compete directly with blockbuster live-action productions.
The company said Swapped is on track to become Netflix’s second most-watched original animated film ever, trailing only KPop Demon Hunters, further emphasizing the latter’s historic impact on the streaming service.
Netflix said that subscribers ended up watching over 97 billion hours of content worldwide from January through June 2026, which is apparently the largest viewing total they’ve had for any six month stretch in the company’s whole history. They also noted in the same update that Korean programming kept climbing, animated films and international productions. It’s showing Netflix audience is getting more and more global, not just local.
The firm further mentioned that starting in 2027, it will stop putting out those engagement reports every six months and instead move to one annual “What We Watched” report.
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