SHANGHAI, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's robot corps is poised to command the spotlight this Chinese New Year season. Kicking off the festivities, AgiBot deployed over 200 humanoid robots across various models at a trailblazing live gala.
The Sunday night event showcased a diverse lineup ranging from synchronized dances and comedic skits to magic acts and traditional martial arts, signaling a shift by Chinese humanoid robotics firms from purely industrial applications toward consumer entertainment and cultural ventures.
While confirming earlier that it would sit out the massively popular Spring Festival Gala, the Shanghai firm instead unveiled its own meticulously staged production, a bold demonstration of its technological prowess.
The evening's highlights offered a vivid glimpse into the future of robotic performance. The opening act featured 24 X2 robots performing with flawless synchronization, and in a particularly stunning moment, one of the robots, suspended on wires, executed a series of graceful aerial maneuvers.
The comedic talk show featured multiple robots sharing the stage to display nascent emotional intelligence, generating laughter by exhibiting embarrassment and confusion through nuanced body language. The most buzzworthy segment saw a celebrity actor performing magic alongside AgiBot robots, pointing toward a future of human-robot collaboration on stage.
The performance was designed not merely as a spectacle, but as a stress test for robots operating in complex, unpredictable environments, hinting at commercial possibilities in tourism, public services and interactive entertainment.
AgiBot announced that it had already received cooperation intentions from large-scale song and dance theaters, performance centers and science and technology museums, which plan to purchase the copyright to the entire evening gala for regular performances.
This gambit signaled a broader trend: China's humanoid robotics players are leveraging high-profile cultural exposure to raise their profile as they muscle into the consumer market.
Unitree Robotics, meanwhile, confirmed its third collaboration with the annual Spring Festival Gala, set to be broadcast live to a global audience on the night of February 16. The robotics firm, based in Hangzhou in east China, made headlines in December when its G1 robots shared the stage with a pop star during a concert, a clip that later earned an emphatic endorsement from Elon Musk on social media: "Impressive."
Also included in the 2026 Spring Festival Gala lineup are three more Chinese humanoid robotics firms, namely MagicLab, Noetix Robotics and Galbot. Their presence as official partners is expected to turn a sentiment-drenched celebration, traditionally centered on warm blessings, into a stage for cutting-edge hardware.
This surge in robotic shows during local celebrations and at corporate year-end events has given rise to a promising rental market. AgiBot has entered the space with its newly launched platform, known as Qingtian Rent, rolling out across 50 cities with a fleet of about 1,000 robots ready for deployment.
The robot performance craze masks a deeper transformation. Over the past year, Chinese-made bots have shed their doddering "grandma gait" for athletic prowess, and are now capable of boxing combinations, acrobatic backflips and grueling long-distance trials.
This April, Beijing will host another humanoid robot half-marathon, following the world's first edition in 2025, which also took place in China's capital.
An industry report has revealed that Chinese robotics firms had emerged as the largest producers of humanoid robots worldwide in 2025. AgiBot achieved an annual shipment volume of more than 5,100 units last year, securing a 39-percent share of the global humanoid robot market and ranking first in the world for both shipment volume and market share.
It was followed by Unitree and UBTECH, based in south China's Shenzhen, according to the report released by Omdia, a tech consultancy located in London. ■
