Unitree's yangko folk dance humanoid robot team lines up at the backstage of the 2025 Spring Festival Gala on January 28, 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Unitree

Chinese robotics firm Unitree Robotics announced on Monday that it has become a robot cooperation partner for China Media Group's (CMG) Spring Festival Gala for the Year of the Horse, marking its third collaboration with the gala, following a robot ox performance in 2021 and a humanoid robot yangko dance show at the 2025 event, according to its social media post.

When contacted by the Global Times, a Unitree representative said details of the upcoming cooperation have yet to be disclosed, but confirmed that the company's robots will "show up" at the 2026 gala.

At the Spring Festival Gala for the Year of the Snake held on January 28, 2025, a group of 16 Unitree humanoid robots participated in a yangko dance performance directed by renowned Chinese director Zhang Yimou. Dressed in northeastern Chinese-style floral padded jackets, the robots performed alongside dancers from the Xinjiang Art Institute of China.

The humanoid robots demonstrated highly dexterous movements, smoothly twisting their waists, mimicking human leg-kicking actions, and even spinning handkerchiefs. The performance sparked extensive discussion across international media outlets and social media platforms, with market observers suggesting that it may have served as a catalyst for the rapid development of China's humanoid robotics sector throughout 2025.

Over the past year, Unitree staged the world's first humanoid robot boxing match, won four gold medals at the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games, and took the lead in bringing humanoid robots onto the stages of theatrical productions and live concerts, as well as into industrial application scenarios, according to the post.

Unitree also said its quadruped and humanoid robots have ranked first globally in shipment volumes in recent years, marking a major leap toward large-scale delivery. Rapid advances in research and the expansion of application scenarios are enabling robots to enter everyday life more frequently, the company noted in the post.

In addition to Unitree, another Chinese humanoid robotics firm, Galbot, announced on Sunday that it has officially become the designated partner for embodied large-model robots for CMG's Spring Festival Gala for the Year of the Horse.

Galbot said it will leverage the gala platform to showcase its robots' autonomous decision-making capabilities in complex scenarios, efficient collaboration, and service-oriented interaction, presenting China's latest achievements in embodied intelligence and robotics technology to a global audience, according to its social media post. 

Global Times