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CCTV Marks 77th National Day with "Chinese Dream, Family and Homeland" Special Gala
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
On the evening of October 1, 2026, at the 8 p.m. prime-time slot, China Media Group (CMG) aired a National Day special program titled "Chinese Dream, Family and Homeland — 2026 National Day Special Program" to mark the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Presented in the format of a televised gala, the program combined songs, dances, recitations, martial-arts performances and dramatized vignettes, offering nationwide audiences a cultural feast that was both substantive in theme and rich in artistry, formally opening that year's slate of large-scale televised cultural programming for the National Day holiday.
On the morning of the broadcast, Beijing's Tiananmen Square held its National Day flag-raising ceremony, drawing more than 101,000 members of the public from across the country to watch in person as the five-starred red flag rose alongside the morning sun. Reports said the flag reached the top of the pole at 6:11 a.m., after which thousands of doves were released simultaneously from both sides of the square in a solemn and festive scene. Together, that morning's flag-raising ceremony and the evening's televised special program formed the complete sequence of official National Day celebrations on October 1, 2026, from day into night.
The special program was broadcast simultaneously on CMG's flagship television channels — the General Channel (CCTV-1), the Variety Channel (CCTV-3) and the Music Channel (CCTV-15) — while also being carried live on radio frequencies including Music Radio, Classic Music Radio and Arts Radio, as well as on new-media platforms such as CCTV News, CCTV Arts, CCTV Video (Yangshipin) and cctv.com. The wide simultaneous rollout across television, radio and online platforms reflected CMG's programming approach of integrating broadcast and online distribution to maximize audience reach.
Built around the theme of "nation and family celebrating together," the program departed from the conventional gala format of simply stringing together song-and-dance numbers, instead adopting a storytelling technique combining "real-life prototypes appearing on stage with dramatized interpretation." It wove the broader national narrative through three micro-narrative threads: "AI Dream Chasers," centered on people pursuing dreams in artificial intelligence; "Same Name, Same Heart," focused on the shared roots and emotional bonds between compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait; and "From Victory to Victory," which looked back over the course of national rejuvenation. Together, the three threads traced the intertwined emotional arcs of ordinary people's lives and the nation's destiny across the dimensions of technological innovation, family reunion and historical depth.
On the performance side, actor Xiao Zhan delivered a solo rendition of the classic song "Me and My Motherland," accompanied by the China Philharmonic Orchestra, in a heartfelt tribute to country and home. Singer Sun Nan joined young singer Xu Ziyao for the original song "A Thought of Rivers and Mountains," while Tan Weiwei delivered a vocally powerful set piece. Together, the three performances formed the emotional high point of the gala's musical segments.
According to the published program list, the special program comprised 16 segments in total. Beyond the threads mentioned above, actors Liu Tao and Michelle Chen performed a duet of the classic song "My Motherland," echoing Xiao Zhan's earlier rendition of "Me and My Motherland." The program also featured a "Medley of Joy" segment led by singers Alan and Xilinaya Gao together with actor Guo Tao, accompanied by an accordion ensemble from Yili, Xinjiang, linking together the songs "Pick Up the Hand Drum and Sing" and "Who Says My Hometown Isn't Good," underscoring the program's emphasis on showcasing the diversity of China's ethnic groups and regional cultures.
The program was co-hosted by CCTV presenters Long Yang and Zhang Tao. Notably, Wang Ji, a recipient of China's "Model of the Times" honorific title, was invited to appear as a guest at the special program. Wang Ji is a weapons-and-equipment research-and-development expert at an institute under China State Shipbuilding Corporation, honored as a "Model of the Times" for having dedicated himself to national defense science and technology work for years under conditions of anonymity. Inviting exemplary model figures to appear on-stage is a common programming device in official Chinese media's festival galas, intended to strengthen the program's persuasive power through the real stories of model individuals.
The martial-arts-themed segment "This Is Kung Fu" was one of the special program's standout highlights, performed by martial-arts world champions Yang Dezhan, Cao Maoyuan and Dong Chonghua, with actor Donnie Yen providing the voiceover narration. Through choreography blending strength and fluidity, the segment paired traditional Chinese martial-arts culture with national spirit, showcasing to viewers both the aesthetic power and cultural depth of Chinese kung fu.
The program also included culturally themed segments such as "Opening a Chapter of Splendor" and "Song of Mountains and Rivers," featuring actors and singers including Liu Tao, Zhou Bichang, Wang Kai, Hai Lai Amao and William Chan, presented through recitation, solo singing and choral performance. Throughout the staging, the production made extensive use of audiovisual technologies such as virtual reality and glasses-free 3D to heighten the gala's immersive quality and artistic expression through technological means.
As one of China Media Group's key annual National Day promotional projects, the National Day special program has become a fixed cultural-programming brand that CMG produces around the holiday each year, standing alongside the Spring Festival Gala and the Mid-Autumn Festival Gala as pillars of the broadcaster's system of festival galas. Such special programs typically serve multiple functions — consolidating social consensus, promoting mainstream cultural values and projecting the country's national image — and offer a window onto how official Chinese media blend ideological messaging with popular entertainment.
This year's holiday also fell within an unusually long combined break — because the 2026 Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day were separated by only three working days, many people took additional leave to link the two holidays into what became the longest continuous travel window of the year. Transport authorities forecast that the seven-day National Day holiday would see roughly 2.13 billion trips nationwide, or about 300 million per day, a new high for the period. Against this backdrop, CMG's decision to air the special program during National Day's prime-time evening slot meant reaching an unusually large potential audience spanning both the National Day and Mid-Autumn holidays, which also shaped the program's emphasis on multi-platform reach and emotional resonance.
This year's program coincided with the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and its thematic design deliberately linked major national achievements to the everyday lives of ordinary citizens, using a storytelling approach of "small individuals in a great era" to deepen emotional resonance and broaden the program's reach. The broadcast also fell within a holiday window in which National Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival landed close together in 2026, with mass cultural events held simultaneously across the country echoing the CCTV special and together building a strong festive atmosphere.
As of this report, official media have not released specific viewership ratings or online streaming figures for the program. However, according to the program schedule and coverage reposted by multiple portal sites, segments featuring stars such as Xiao Zhan and Donnie Yen sparked wide discussion on social media, and related program-schedule information repeatedly made portal sites' trending-news lists both before and after the broadcast — evidence of the sustained public attention this annual cultural event continues to command.
