2026 Spring Festival Gala: Cai Ming's seven-year return and a technological feast with robots dominating the screen

Jiuzhi Network News The theme of the 2026 Year of the Horse Spring Festival Gala is "The galloping of the horse is unstoppable." While continuing the main tone of "happy, auspicious and joyful", it also brings two major highlights: the return of comedy queen Cai Ming after seven years, and The comprehensive "screen hegemony" of robot technology. This party was not only a cultural feast, but also a concentrated display of China's intelligent manufacturing capabilities.

Cai Ming: Seven years of waiting, warmth returns

64-year-old Cai Ming completed her first Spring Festival Gala return since 2019's "My Son Comes" with the sketch "Grandma's Favorite". This was also her 28th time on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala. In the program, Cai Ming transformed into a fashionable silver-haired grandma and teamed up with actor Wang Tianfang to tell a warm story about family reunion and intergenerational communication through innovative ventrilogue puppet performance.

The most touching thing is that Cai Ming's return completed a "dream linkage" that spanned 30 years. In 1996, in the science fiction skit "Robot Fun Talks" written by Feng Xiaogang, she lost weight to 90 kilograms and her waist to one foot six in order to create a corner of "robot cauliflower." Thirty years later, when artificial intelligence has been deeply integrated into daily life, Cai Ming once again "continued the front line" with robots, interacting with Songobu Power's bionic robot in the sketches, realizing the artistic leap from "original robot" to "technological grandma".

Robot: The evolutionary path from supporting role to leading role

If Cai Ming's return is a continuation of feelings, then the full appearance of robots is a leap in technology. The 2026 Spring Festival Gala can be called the "Robot Mobilization". Four domestic robot companies, Yushu Technology, Songyan Power, Magic Atom, and Galaxy General, made a collective appearance, covering 12 programs and more than 200 robots performed on stage.

The martial arts program "Martial BOT" has become the biggest highlight. Yushu Technology's Unitree H2 humanoid robot (1.82 meters tall and 31 joint degrees of freedom) competed with 86 teenagers from Henan Tagou Martial Arts School and completed difficult movements such as horse vault, back somersaults, drunken boxing, and nunchakus. Compared with the childish performance of the robot in the 2025 Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Snake "Seedling BOT", this year's robot movements are smooth and precise, and its coordination ability reaches millisecond-level error control, demonstrating the rapid progress of domestic robot technology.

The integration of science and technology has been comprehensively upgraded. In addition to the robot performances in the main venue, each branch venue also incorporated technological elements: Matsumoto Power Robot participated in Cai Ming's sketch performance; the magic atomic robot assisted Chen Xiaochun, Yan Chengxu and others in the song "Intelligent Creation of the Future"; the Galaxy Universal Robot joined Shen Teng-Mali's New Year micro-movie "My Most Unforgettable Tonight". In terms of stage design, the 30-meter CNC matrix screen is linked to the AR virtual horse, and 5584 flip modules form the galloping horse pattern, truly realizing the immersive experience of "people are in the scene and the scene moves with people."

Thirty years of scientific and technological dialogue

The double return of Cai Ming and robots happens to constitute a perfect closed loop of the times. The robots in 1996's "Fun Talks on Robots" are people's romantic imagination of the future, while the robots in 2026's "Grandma's Favorite" have become a true portrayal of daily science and technology. This kind of intergenerational dialogue is not only a tribute to an individual's artistic career, but also a vivid epitome of the thirty years of development of science and technology in China.

Netizens were filled with emotion: "China's 'first-generation robots' have encountered new era robots! "When Cai Ming-style customized bionic robots reproduce their appearance 1:1 and look exactly like real people when sitting, the boundary between technology and humanity is blurring. From a "robot girlfriend" that takes two months to die on a diet to a bionic robot that can accurately synchronize lips and micro-expressions, these 30 years of changes have witnessed China's transformation from technological catch-up to technological leadership.

A new paradigm of technology on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala

For the first time in the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, there will be no cross-talk programs throughout, and only about 5 sketches or comedy skits will be retained for language programs. At the same time,"robot AI" has become a new protagonist, building a new performance paradigm of "human-machine collaboration, hyper-digital reality." Robots are no longer just props to show off skills, but performance participants who can accept obstacles, tell jokes, and convey emotional value.

Behind this "screen hegemony" is the hard power of China's intelligence. All robots on the Spring Festival Gala, from internal motors and sensors to control algorithms and control systems, have a localization rate of more than 85%, completely breaking the monopoly of foreign technology. As CCTV News Science said, this high-dynamic cluster control technology is the first public appearance in the world. Relying on the dual support of 5G edge computing, it demonstrates the confidence of "China Intelligent Manufacturing."

When the AR horse gallops on the stage, the talking wooden figure in Cai Ming's hand is knocking on the hearts of millions of families in the softest way. The 2026 Spring Festival Gala uses half of the fireworks and half of the freshness of technology to complete the perfect integration of traditional culture and modern technology. This performance is not only an entertainment feast on New Year's Eve, but also a global "China Intelligent Manufacturing" product launch conference, announcing that a more perceptible and visible robot era is moving towards public life.