Indian streaming now has a split-screen decade: page-view interest in Indian shows on IMDb grew about 17-fold between 2016 and 2026, yet the number of new series and seasons commissioned in the country has fallen for two straight years. That tension frames 10 Years of Streaming in India – An IMDb Report 2026, which ranks each year’s 10 biggest Indian series from 2016 to 2026—110 slots filled by 64 different shows.
Who owned the decade
Mirzapur is the most persistent hit, charting nine times and appearing every year since it launched. Scam 1992 was the only show to chart five times off a single season. Crime and thriller titles took 48 of the 110 positions, though horror, romance, comedy and drama all made gains in the later years.
Platform and production scoreboard
The rankings reward platforms differently depending on whether you count total slots or distinct titles:
- Prime Video and Amazon MX Player: 34 positions across 17 series—the most overall.
- Netflix: 21 positions across 18 series—the broadest range of distinct titles.
- YouTube: launchpad for 13 of the 64 charting series; 11 of those were later picked up by subscription services.
- TVF: nine charting series and 17 Top 10 slots, close to one in every six entries.
TVF’s run starts with TVF Pitchers in 2016 and extends to Sapne vs Everyone this year. YouTube’s showing points to a structural role: a wide creator base builds stories that can travel to bigger audiences.
Talent that repeats, talent that ranges
The report names Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Vikrant Massey, Jitendra Kumar, Kapil Sharma and Sunil Grover as streaming’s MVPs—performers tied to recurring franchises and hit series. Kay Kay Menon, Naveen Kasturia and Mona Singh are flagged as the most versatile, each appearing in at least five series across varied roles. Multi-hyphenates such as Shahid Kapoor, Vijay Sethupathi, Samantha, Barun Sobti and Karan Tacker show how an established screen persona can cross into a new format.
The slowdown beneath the growth
Commissioning tells a more cautious story. New series and seasons peaked at 202 in 2023, then slipped to 169 in 2024 and 145 in 2025. IMDb reads that as a pickier market as the business consolidates. Hindi-language shows made up 66% of Indian streaming originals in 2025.
“Building on the success of last year’s report on Indian cinema, we turned our lens to series and used IMDb Data to understand how a decade of streaming has reshaped audience interests,” said Yaminie Patodia, head of IMDb India.
The study also brings in industry leaders to weigh in on what comes next: Gaurav Gandhi of Prime Video, Gunjan Soni of YouTube, Monika Shergill of Netflix, former Applause CEO Sameer Nair and Vijay Koshy of TVF.
IMDb is owned by Amazon, so the combined Prime Video and Amazon MX Player tally is best read with that ownership in mind. For media planners and entertainment marketers, the strategic signal is franchise value, not slate size. Demand has scaled, but supply is concentrating around formats that can return season after season.
Source: Variety
