- Humanoid robots starred during China’s Spring Festival Gala performance
- The event is China’s most-watched TV show and got 23 billion views
- Some of the robots on show now have order backlogs as interest soars
China gave the world a glimpse of its latest humanoid robots at its 2026 Spring Festival Gala on Monday – and the show was so impressive that many of its robo-stars now reportedly have order backlogs.
The Spring Festival Gala airs annually on the eve of the Lunar New Year and is China’s most-watched TV show. The state-owned broadcaster, China Central Television, claimed the show got an incredible 23 billion views across all platforms.
To put that in context, Super Bowl LX drew 137.8 million live viewers on NBCUniversal platforms, with its halftime show garnering 4 billion views in the first 24 hours.
It was no coincidence that kung fu robots were the centerpiece of this year’s show. China is entering the first year of its next five-year plan, and robotics has been highlighted as a major growth engine. That meant the stage was set for the likes of Unitree Robotics, the country’s biggest robot maker, to show how far it is now ahead of the likes of Tesla.
The Unitree G1 robot was the viral breakout from the performance, with its martial arts antics (see the video below) so athletic that many suspected the videos were AI-generated. In reality, the G1 is an expensive, high-end humanoid that was able to flourish in a very controlled environment.
That hasn’t stopped interest from spiking after its kung fu showcase. The G1 costs about 85,000 yuan in China (about $12,300 / £9,100 / AU$17,400), so it isn’t exactly a consumer impulse buy. Yet the South China Morning Post claims that the earliest delivery dates for the G1 have been pushed back to early March and that its product page has been creaking under the weight of interest.
The more interesting robot, if a slightly less athletic one, is arguably the Noetix Bumi. The child-sized robot appeared in a comedy sketch at the Spring Festival Gala and costs only 10,000 yuan ($1,450 / £1,070 / AU$2,050), so similar to a high-end smartphone. It was again apparently the subject of high interest at the retailer JD.com, and its delivery date has now been pushed back to late April.
Neither of these robots is shattering sales records, but they are part of a trend of humanoids shuffling ever closer towards the mainstream. The South China Morning Post again claims that Unitree aims to ship 20,000 humanoids this year, around four times more than in 2025.
Elon Musk, meanwhile, recently said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Tesla will begin selling its Optimus humanoid robot “probably sometime next year”. By that point, they may well have some catching up to do.
Waiting for the ’embodied intelligence’ breakthrough
The big question with all of these humanoid robots remains what they’re actually for and who they’ll serve.
Consumers are still interested spectators rather than buyers, with Unitree Robotics getting most of its investment from industrial giants and venture capital firms. Rivals like UBTech have struck deals to have their humanoid robots at border crossings, which, as we’ve previously mused, isn’t a dystopian nightmare at all.
Wherever they ultimately live their lives, Unitree thinks the game-changer for robots isn’t their impressive athleticism but their minds. The company’s CEO and founder, Wang Xingxing, recently talked up the potential of ’embodied intelligence’, which is a robot’s ability to learn by physically interacting with its environment rather than being trained like today’s AI models.
“If there are breakthroughs in embodied AI models and robotics technology that can truly be applied at scale in the coming years, the heat could be 100 or even 1,000 times higher than it is now,” Wang told China’s CCTV state broadcaster. “I believe this will far surpass the mobile internet era.”
That’s a big claim, but those breakthroughs are also a big ‘if’. As impressive as the Unitree G1’s acrobatics currently are, they remain something of a flashy tech demo. But 2026 and the Year of the Fire Horse could yet blaze a trail for that truly big robotics leap – and if that happens, the likes of Tesla could be left fighting for a podium place.
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mark.wilson@futurenet.com (Mark Wilson)
