Netflix’s 2025 winners: the shows and movies that actually moved the needle
The streaming giant says fandom-led hits drove 96 billion hours watched, led by KPop Demon Hunters’ record 482 million views.
What did Netflix viewers watch in the second half of 2025? Netflix’s latest What We Watched engagement report points to a familiar answer: big fandom-driven titles, and the catalogue lift that comes with them.
Released on 20 January 2026, the report covers viewing from July to December 2025 and measures engagement in “views”, calculated as total hours viewed divided by runtime. Netflix said members watched a combined 96 billion hours over the six-month period.
A record-breaking movie run
Netflix said animated musical fantasy KPop Demon Hunters was its most-watched title ever across a six-month reporting window, pulling in 482 million views between July and December.
The title also delivered spillover engagement beyond the feature. Netflix pointed to KPop Demon Hunters Lyric Videos, which drew an additional 32 million views, signalling repeat viewing and shareable formats as part of the hit’s footprint.
Top 10 most-watched Netflix movies (July–December 2025, by views):
- KPop Demon Hunters — 482M
- Happy Gilmore 2 — 135M
- Frankenstein — 98M
- My Oxford Year — 86M
- The Old Guard 2 — 82M
- The Woman in Cabin 10 — 80M
- A House of Dynamite — 76M
- The Thursday Murder Club — 69M
- Brick — 67M
- The Great Flood — 66M
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Wednesday leads TV, Stranger Things lifts the catalogue
On the series side, Netflix said Wednesday season 2 ranked as the platform’s most-watched show of the half with 124 million views. Stranger Things season 5 followed with 94 million views.
Netflix also highlighted the franchise effect: all five seasons of Stranger Things placed in the top 15 most-watched shows for the period, combining for 275 million views.
Top 10 most-watched Netflix shows (July–December 2025, by views):
- Wednesday — Season 2 — 124M
- Stranger Things — Season 5 — 94M
- UNTAMED — Season 1 — 93M
- Squid Game — Season 3 — 79M
- Stranger Things — Season 1 — 57M
- MONSTER: The Ed Gein Story — 56M
- Sean Combs: The Reckoning — 51M
- Wednesday — Season 1 — 47M
- Ms. Rachel — Season 1 — 47M
- Stranger Things — Season 2 — 45M
Genre breadth still matters
Beyond the tentpoles, Netflix said comedies, dramas, documentaries and kids titles continued to deliver scale, while non-English language programming accounted for more than a third of all viewing across the period.
For Netflix’s programming and marketing teams, the second-half data reinforces a simple reality: the biggest hits increasingly behave like ecosystems: driving rewatching, adjacent formats, and renewed attention across back catalogues.
