Variety shows in recent years have always explored issues close to life, and have focused on providing audiences with content that can resonate strongly with people, such as love, marriage, and workplace, hoping to provide audiences with food for thought in terms of both practical value and emotional value.
What new possibilities are there for variety shows? Recently, the "Cool Variety Show·Cool Friends 2025 Media Private Party" was held. The core creators of Youku Variety Studio introduced future content planning and released the 2025 Alibaba Big Entertainment Variety Show List.
Among them are the Nth generation of variety shows such as "Mahua Te Kai Xin 2", "Cat in the Box 2", "Rap Dream Factory 2", "This is Street Dance 7", and "Wireless Surpass Class 3", as well as new variety show IPs such as "Landing in Africa Plan", "Comedy Battle", and "Four Good Families", as well as niche cultural variety shows such as "Fengchi Racing Driver", "I Praise Celebrities", and "I Am a Hidden One".
"Music variety shows, comedy variety shows, and romance variety shows are the three main areas of focus," said Shen Yan, vice president of Youku.
New music variety shows include "Do You Want to Turn on the Mic?" 》《OST Original Soundtrack World》《The King of Breaking the Cocoon》《Rap Dream Factory 2》 and a cooking competition variety show "Hot Game: Battle of 100 Chefs".
Among them, "Do You Want to Turn on the Microphone?" 》 contestants need to face the challenge of no audio editing to satisfy the audience's desire to explore the "original flavor"; "The King of Singers" combines talent shows with survival games; "OST Original World" integrates plot stories, songwriting, and training of new talents.
"OST Original Soundtrack World" poster
In the comedy variety show category, there are "Comedy Battle" and "Four Good Families". The former focuses on comedy competitions, while the latter is created by the original team of "Mars Intelligence Agency" and is positioned as a comedy annual variety show. To provide audiences with electronic pickled mustard tubers, four variety shows including "The Burden-Breaking Conference 2025", "I Can't Hold It Anymore Spring Special", "Floor Survival Guide" and "The Family That Cannot Be Used by Martial Arts" will also be launched online. These programs include group variety shows, family comedies, comedy shorts, etc., with diverse program types.
"Comedy War" poster
The love variety shows are concentrated in the Emotional Study Club, with a total of three love variety shows including "Love Preference", "Run to Love Island" and "There are Thousands of Kinds of Love" and one emotional variety show "Friends' Shared House". These variety shows explore the emotional changes between lovers, couples, and friends respectively. A more special one is "Love Preference", which attempts to explore the changes in emotions through a survival test that is more extreme than life.
In addition to the three main tracks, new variety shows in 2025 are also making efforts in the niche cultural field to discover incremental content.
"The Racing Driver" uses racing culture as a starting point to lead the trend of racing culture; "I Praise Celebrities" brings together top bloggers from various platforms to focus on the creative expression of Generation Z; "This! Street Dance of China 7 will go abroad for the first time and start the Asian Tour...
Poster of "The Racer"
Variety shows in the healing amusement park category, such as "The Wind Dog Voyages to the West", "Blind Box Travel Bureau 2 Island Season", "Please Give Me a Five-Star Rating", "Come with Me 2", "Let's BBQ Together", "Magical Friends", and "All Destinations", attempt to relieve the audience's mental exhaustion in life and work through travel. Among them, "The Wind Dog Goes to the West" aims to create a benchmark male group variety show, using the most passionate shots to record an exploration of self and the world.
Poster of "The Wind Dog Goes to the West"
In the acting training camp category, there are both old-fashioned variety shows such as "Infinite Beyond Class 3", as well as new acting variety shows such as "Wild Training Camp", "Young Man Learn Martial Arts", "Jiangnan 12 Gatherings", and "Cool Dramas Have Responses".
Many variety shows in the list also create emotional interactions with the audience through their profound cultural and historical heritage. For example, "The Wind Dog Voyages to the West" conveys the feelings of home and country through the history of navigation, "Landing in Africa Plan" is a cross-cultural documentary that evokes empathy, and lightweight interactive experiments such as "All Destinations" and "Jiangnan·Twelve Gatherings" aim to explore the possible combination of variety shows with travel, history, education, and culture.