Picture Credit: Netflix
If you’ve been following our weekly Top 10 roundups here at What’s on Netflix, you already know that KPop Demon Hunters has broken pretty much every record going. Netflix’s own data paints a pretty good picture of how well it’s done compared to its counterparts, but what about third-party data?
Nielsen, the US company that’s used by lots of people within Netflix and treated as one of the definitive streaming numbers organizations by industry folk and beyond, has been covering KPop Demon Hunters in quite some depth, so we thought we’d put together everything they’ve said about the launch of the movie, how it tracked throughout, who exactly was watching, and more!
Note: Nielsen ratings only cover United States viewing on connected devices.
The 26-Week Streak: Defying the Streaming Gravity
We always talk about the “decay rate” of streaming movies here at What’s on Netflix. Typically, a Netflix Original movie gets heavy sampling in its first two weeks and then falls off a cliff as the algorithm moves on to the next shiny new release.
KPop Demon Hunters completely ignored that rule, and given that Netflix titles are competing with every other streaming service in the weekly movie charts, the fact that it reached over half a year streak in the weekly top 10s is remarkable. Of course, as we covered earlier this week, the movie has now featured a full year in the Netflix charts.
Take a look at the week-to-week Nielsen data. We’ve charted out the raw viewing minutes (in millions) to show just how absurd this run was:
| Week | Date Window | Movie Position | Minutes Viewed (Millions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | June 16 – June 22 | #8 | 250 |
| 2 | June 23 – June 29 | #1 | 778 |
| 3 | June 30 – July 6 | #3 | 720 |
| 4 | July 7 – July 13 | #2 | 817 |
| 5 | July 14 – July 20 | #1 | 949 |
| 6 | July 21 – July 27 | #2 | 1,027 |
| 7 | July 28 – August 3 | #2 | 1,102 |
| 8 | August 4 – August 10 | #1 | 977 |
| 9 | August 11 – August 17 | #1 | 1,018 |
| 10 | August 18 – August 24 | #1 | 930 |
| 11 | August 25 – August 31 | #1 | 1,115 |
| 12 | September 1 – September 7 | #2 | 1,088 |
| 13 | September 8 – September 14 | #1 | 917 |
| 14 | September 15 – September 21 | #1 | 828 |
| 15 | September 22 – September 28 | #1 | 746 |
| 16 | September 29 – October 5 | #2 | 731 |
| 17 | October 6 – October 12 | #1 | 808 |
| 18 | October 13 – October 19 | #2 | 749 |
| 19 | October 20 – October 26 | #3 | 599 |
| 20 | October 27 – November 2 | #2 | 674 |
| 21 | November 3 – November 9 | #2 | 588 |
| 22 | November 10 – November 16 | #2 | 571 |
| 23 | November 17 – November 23 | #5 | 412 |
| 24 | November 24 – November 30 | #2 | 591 |
| 25 | December 1 – December 7 | #7 | 341 |
| 26 | December 8 – December 14 | #7 | 364 |
It’s worth noting that it only lost this streak during the Christmas period when Christmas movies were all the rage.
Diving into Nielsen’s weekly footnotes reveals exactly why this movie had such unprecedented legs. First and foremost is the “Golden” effect. Notice how the viewership doesn’t peak in Week 1 or 2? Instead, watch time actually increased over the first five weeks, a trajectory Nielsen outright called “unusual.” This massive mid-summer surge perfectly correlated with the release of the movie’s hit single “Golden” on July 4th. As the song climbed the Billboard charts, it acted as a massive funnel, driving millions of viewers back to the film. Amazingly, Nielsen noted that the movie’s single most-watched day was August 16th—nearly two months after it premiered. Posting five separate billion-minute weeks that late into a streaming run is unheard of.
Beyond the Billboard bump, the data highlights a massive, highly engaged multicultural audience that kept the momentum alive. While the heavy Kids 2-11 demographic was a constant (often making up around 50% of the audience), Nielsen’s notes repeatedly highlighted massive over-indexing with Hispanic and Asian viewers. Hispanic households consistently accounted for roughly a third of all viewing (hitting 33% in early September), while the film repeatedly drew the highest concentration of Asian viewers of any title across all of streaming during its summer peak. Netflix didn’t just have a hit; they captured lightning in a bottle by locking in multiple highly-engaged, repeat-viewing demographics all at exactly the same time.
Partway into its run, Nielsen released a chart showing daily minutes viewed, and you can see that, as time progressed, weekends became the most-watched days. Makes sense if you consider the age demographics!
Dominating the 2025 ARTEY Awards
Back in January, Nielsen announced the winners of their second annual ARTEY Awards, crowning the most-streamed titles of the year.
According to the data, KPop Demon Hunters was the Top Kids Movie of 2025, racking up a massive 20.6 billion viewing minutes following its premiere on Netflix in June 2025.
To put that into perspective, the runner-up in the kids’ category was Disney’s Moana 2, which pulled in 9.4 billion minutes on Disney+. Heck, it was also double the general audience movie, too, which was Happy Gilmore 2, which picked up 7.1B minutes. KPop Demon Hunters more than doubling the viewership of one of Disney’s biggest flagship sequels is not something you’d normally expect. Nielsen’s data center also revealed that the movie charted in the overall Streaming Top 10 for a mind-boggling 26 consecutive weeks. We always talk about “legs” when it comes to Netflix releases, and a half-year residency in the top 10 is the absolute definition of staying power.
The Secret Weapon: The Adult Demographic
Here is where the data gets incredibly fascinating. Nielsen categorizes KPop Demon Hunters as a “Kids Movie” because 48% of its audience was in the 2-11 age range. Kids rewatching movies on a loop is what Disney+ dines out on, but Netflix has struggled to replicate it, at least to the scale that their movies achieve.
But what drove this movie to the stratosphere? The adults.
Nielsen revealed that KPop Demon Hunters was actually the #1 most-streamed movie of 2025 for adults 18-34 and 35-49. It completely transcended the typical family movie night and tapped into a massive adult fandom.
2026: The Run Continues (Along With the Hardware)
Usually, when we look at year-end data for a movie that dropped in June, we expect to see viewership fall off a cliff by the new year. Not this one.
So far in 2026, KPop Demon Hunters has logged an additional 2.7 billion viewing minutes (as of April 2026), casually keeping its spot in Nielsen’s streaming Top 10 nearly a year after its debut.
Have you contributed to the billions of viewing minutes for KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix? Let us know in the comments down below.
