Netflix says it’s putting an end to its semiannual data releases that detail views and total time spent on thousands of series and movies on the platform. Instead, the company will move to annual releases starting early next year.
But the second half of this year will probably feature a small uptick in viewing time — because that’s how it’s been for just about every six months since Netflix began offering its big data releases.
For the first half of 2026, Netflix users worldwide spent about 97.7 billion hours watching series and films on the platform. That’s a 2 percent increase from the first half of last year (95.2 billion) and a small uptick from the second half of 2025 (97.1 billion hours). Since a 4 percent downturn in the second half of 2023, the pattern of small but steady viewing time growth has held for each six-month data release.
As for the decision to switch to annual data drops, Netflix said in its quarterly earnings letter that “engagement is not just the quantity of view hours, but also refers to the quality and variety of our offering. To make this clearer, we’re making a change to our view hours disclosure. After today’s What We Watched report, which covers the first half of 2026, we will shift to publishing this report annually in the first quarter, beginning in 2027. The goal of separating the publication of the report from our earnings results is to keep the focus on our primary financial metrics — revenue and operating profit.”
