RED LAND Opens Today: 160 IPs, 80 Booths, and Anime Gaming's Turn to the Real World
RED LAND 2026, run by Chinese social platform Xiaohongshu, opened on October 2 and runs through October 6 on Fuxing Island in Shanghai. Exhibiting game and anime IPs more than doubled to over 160, while booths grew from the low 40s to more than 80, with a parade and a night-time convention format added for the first time. The debut event drew over 100,000 visitors in three days and lifted mall spending nearby. Here is what the expansion says about where anime-game marketing money is going.
What is happening on Fuxing Island
From 40-odd booths to more than 80
According to a Jiefang Daily report published on October 1, this year's exhibitor list exceeds 160 game and anime IPs, double the 2025 edition, and booths grew from the low 40s to more than 80. The lineup includes Honor of Kings, Black Myth: Wukong, Delta Force and Honkai: Star Rail, alongside Disney properties such as Zootopia and Marvel, plus premium PC and console titles like Cyberpunk 2077. Live-actor NPC staffing also grew, from 17 characters and 34 performers last year to 27 characters and 54 performers.
People's Daily's Shanghai edition reports the official figure for the explorable area as more than 100,000 square metres, up from 80,000, split into three zones.
A parade to turn a fragmented day into a shared memory
Every day between 17:00 and 17:30, a lead vehicle, eight publisher floats, and a community "protagonist" formation gather on Adventurer's Avenue. The organiser's reasoning is blunt: players spend the day scattered across 70 or 80 booths, so the event needs one moment where everyone is in the same place. Registration for the community formation opened for the first time this year, and about 150 users have signed up to walk with floats they built themselves.
The money lands on the island, but mostly off it
Retail spending in double and triple digits
The debut RED LAND drew over 100,000 visitors across three days, with day tickets selling out in as little as three seconds during the public sale. During that event, spending in the Wujiaochang commercial district rose 11.4 percent year on year over three days, while the riverside district jumped 142.4 percent. On October 5, the EDC China electronic music carnival opens on the island's north side, with an estimated 500 million yuan in direct and indirect spending for Yangpu.
Why a social platform builds its own festival
Xiaohongshu says its games-related monthly active users passed 120 million as of 2025, with game content posts up 147 percent for the year and an anime-interest audience of 137 million. Its game and anime operations lead, Yinghuo, says the strategy shifted this year from following user trends to actively setting them. The subtext: when online supply is already oversupplied, scarce real-world experiences are what capture attention.
Is offline the next growth channel for anime games?
Publishers paying for a three-to-five-day event are doing the maths on acquisition costs. An offline venue can deliver user acquisition, retention, and social currency at once. A recommendation slot cannot sell the memory of singing along with a crowd; a parade can. What offline buys, though, is brand and community equity rather than same-quarter revenue.
The ceiling: three hard limits
First, space and holiday windows are fixed constraints. Fuxing Island covers just 1.3 square kilometres and the event runs inside the National Day holiday, so the number of editions per year is limited. Second, published figures for the explorable area differ — "more than 100,000 square metres" versus larger numbers — so treat the totals with care. Third, and most important, festival attendance does not translate directly into game retention. Plenty of visitors come for cosplay, merchandise and photos rather than for any specific new update.
My take: this is the platform's content business
The biggest winners are the platform and the city, not individual games. Xiaohongshu ties creators, IPs and users into one physical space and gains leverage over both content supply and monetisation; the city strings retail and tourism together around a holiday event. For publishers this is a bonus, not a lifeline. To see which IPs actually pulled a crowd, community data after the event will be more telling than photos from the grounds, and GameHub will keep tracking it.
FAQ
When and where is RED LAND 2026?
It runs October 2-6, 2026 on Fuxing Island in Shanghai's Yangpu district, with a parade daily from 17:00 to 17:30. It is the second consecutive year the event has been held on the island.
Which game IPs are at RED LAND this year?
More than 160 game and anime IPs, double last year's total, including Honor of Kings, Black Myth: Wukong, Delta Force and Honkai: Star Rail, plus Disney's Zootopia and Marvel properties.
How much does RED LAND affect nearby businesses?
During the 2025 edition, spending in the Wujiaochang district rose 11.4 percent year on year over three days and the riverside district rose 142.4 percent. The EDC music carnival running alongside it is projected to drive over 500 million yuan in direct and indirect spending.