Viewers watched about 97 billion hours on Netflix in the first half of 2026, the platform’s strongest half-year figure, with non-English titles now accounting for more than a third of viewing and Korean programming the largest single contributor to that share, according to viewing analysis of the period.
The structural shift underneath the headline is the story. The United States share of viewing across the major global platforms — Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video measured together — has fallen from about 52 percent in the early 2020s to about 45 percent by mid-2025 across the 19 countries analysed, while non-American content climbed from roughly 37 percent to about 45 percent. American viewers themselves remain the most home-oriented audience in the study, at about 62 percent domestic content, which is precisely why the global movement matters: the growth markets are everywhere else, and everywhere else increasingly watches itself.
Two disciplines govern the new economics. The first is depth without blockbusters: no single title accounted for more than about 1 percent of total hours in the analysis, even as a leading series could post figures like 104 million views. The catalogue, not the hit, is the asset — a library deep enough in enough languages that every subscriber’s next hour is already owned. The second is local production as global inventory: a Korean, Spanish or Indian original is commissioned for its home market, dubbed and subtitled into dozens of languages, and amortised across continents, inverting the old model in which Hollywood made and the world watched.
The context is a contracting pie fought over more cleverly. Overall viewing across the fifteen markets tracked is reported down about a fifth since 2023, which makes share gains by non-English content a genuine redistribution rather than a rising tide. Studios that once treated international as a sales territory now treat it as a commissioning map; American content’s falling share is not American content failing, but the rest of the world’s production learning, at platform scale, to travel.
For Hollywood, the strategic answer is already visible: fewer, larger bets at home — the $2.5 billion event film our Entertainment desk covers today — and partnership, acquisition and local-language commissioning abroad. The 97 billion hours say the audience has globalised. The analysis says the supply finally has too. The next contest is not whether the world watches American stories, but whether American companies own the stories the world watches.
Related reading:
