In May, a lifestyle app known for photographs of skincare shelves and outfit grids bought the broadcast rights to a football World Cup.
I keep coming back to that sentence, because everything a fashion brand needs to understand about Xiaohongshu’s next two years is inside it.
The news
On 28 May 2026, 虎嗅网 reported that Xiaohongshu had secured broadcasting rights for the 2026 World Cup. Three days earlier the platform had put a number on its scale for the first time in a while.
| Monthly active users | 400 million |
| Daily searches | over 800 million |
| Daily active users (mid-2026) | around 170 million |
| Content push | Video over two minutes |
| Verticals backed with creator funds | 15 |
The phrase used in the Chinese coverage is 全面押注, betting everything, on mid and long video beyond two minutes and on what they call deep content. Alongside it the company has been rolling out long-form formats, podcasts and 4K video, and putting creator money behind fifteen content verticals.
A platform does not buy football to sell more face cream. It buys football because it wants people to sit still inside the app for ninety minutes instead of scrolling for four.
Why this is awkward for fashion specifically
Fashion was the category that benefited most from what Xiaohongshu used to be. A grid of nine images, a caption with the right keywords, a price, a location. Cheap to make, easy to translate from a European campaign, and it performed.
That format is not being banned. It is being deprioritised, which is worse, because nothing announces it. You simply notice that the same work earns less each quarter and you assume the algorithm is against you.
Here is the tension nobody at the platform will resolve for you. Two-minute video is expensive, and the 800 million daily searches are still mostly text and image queries. Search is where the compounding happens, because a note that ranks keeps working long after you stop paying. The team at Ecommerce China Agency put the number on it: “60%+ of searches on Xiaohongshu are product-related, and that’s where brand discovery begins.”
So you are being pushed toward a format the platform is rewarding, while your most durable asset still lives in the old one. Anyone who tells you to abandon one for the other has not run a budget.
From a conversation last month
Designer and founder, Milan accessories label, films everything herself: I was told I now need two-minute videos. I make bags. What happens in a two-minute video about a bag?
Cindy: Nothing, if you film the bag. Everything, if you film the decision. Why this leather and not the cheaper one. What you rejected. What the first version looked like and why it failed.
Designer: That is not marketing, that is just me talking.
Cindy: That is the format. Chinese viewers on this platform have become very good at spotting a script. The videos that hold attention past ninety seconds are almost never the polished ones. They are somebody who knows something explaining it badly and honestly.
Designer: And if I only manage one a month?
Cindy: One a month is fine. Keep publishing your images at the same rhythm as before, because that is what people search. Add one long piece a month that only you could make. Do not swap one for the other. Nobody has enough budget to rebuild their whole content operation in a quarter, and you do not need to.
What I would actually do
Keep the search layer intact. Your image notes are your shelf space. Do not cut them to fund video. Cut your top-tier KOL spend instead, which is where most brands are overpaying anyway.
Make the one video only you can make. A factory. A fitting. A material rejected three times. Brands own this material and consistently fail to use it, because it does not look like advertising. That is exactly why it works.
Stop briefing video like film. Two minutes of an honest person in a workshop beats twenty seconds of beautiful colour grading on this platform right now. The production values that win on a runway film lose here.
Use the vertical funds while they exist. Platform money behind fifteen categories means creator partnerships in those categories are temporarily cheaper than they should be. That window closes when the subsidies do.
Do not chase the football. Unless you sell sportswear, a World Cup audience on Xiaohongshu is not your audience. It is a signal about the platform’s ambition, not a media buy for a leather goods house.
The thing I am watching
Here is my open question. A platform that succeeds at long video becomes more like Douyin, and Douyin already exists and is better at it. Xiaohongshu’s advantage was never entertainment. It was that people arrived with a question and left with an answer.
If the feed fills with two-minute video and the search results get worse, the platform trades its most defensible asset for a fight it may not win. I do not think that is the plan. I do think it is the risk, and I would build a 2027 content plan that survives either outcome.
For what the platform’s own user data says about who is actually buying, we went through it in what Xiaohongshu’s luxury user data tells brands about 2026 buyers, and the discovery mechanics are in the best way for brand discovery in China.
Have you tried long video on Xiaohongshu yet, and did it earn anything that your images did not? Tell me what you saw.
Cindy Zhang is the CEO of Fashion China Agency. Fifteen years inside Chinese fashion and luxury: editorial and PR at Vogue China, brand-side experience with Guerlain, then the luxury segment at Xiaohongshu. She now leads a Shanghai-based team working exclusively with premium and luxury fashion brands in China. Read her full story →