2026 Spring Festival Gala logo conveys China's auspicious culture to viewers: designer

The logo for China Media Group (CMG)'s 2026 Spring Festival Gala conveys the country's auspicious culture to viewers around the world, its designer Gu Yongjiang said in an interview in Beijing on Wednesday.

On the same day, CMG unveiled the official theme and logo for its 2026 Spring Festival Gala, celebrating the start of the Year of the Horse on the Chinese lunar calendar, which begins on February 17, 2026.

The theme of the 2026 Spring Festival Gala is "Galloping steed, Onward unstoppable" inspired by a poetic line from an ancient anthology of Chinese poetry.

The logo inspired the designers to draw images of "four horses galloping side by side" from the four characters in "Galloping steed, Onward unstoppable," each of which contains the radical of "horse" in Chinese, and they combined them with classic elements of traditional Chinese cloud, thunder, and meander patterns. This became the core creative concept for the main logo.

"First of all, the four characters are visually artistic as their 'horse' radicals look like four horses standing side by side. By combining cloud and thunder patterns with meander patterns, we designed an entirely new type of motif, which highlights the images of impregnable Great Wall and galloping cavalry. We would also create a new auspicious phrase and integrate it with the main logo's visual symbols, which in effect means we are creating a new form of auspicious culture."said Gu Yongjiang, designer of the main logo.

The Chinese lunar year for 2026 is the Year of the Horse, one of the most dynamic and spirited in the 12-animal Chinese zodiac cycle, representing strength, perseverance and unstoppable momentum.

The Spring Festival Gala hosted by CMG has been an essential part of the Chinese New Year celebrations since 1983. The gala includes songs, dances, comic sketches, operas and folk arts.

The annual spectacle, known as the most-watched television program in the world, is broadcast on the eve of the Chinese New Year, when families come together to ring in the new lunar year.

This year's Spring Festival eve falls on Feb 16, 2026.

2026 Spring Festival Gala logo conveys China's auspicious culture to viewers: designer

Two U.S. F-18 fighter jets entered Venezuelan airspace on Tuesday, circling for about 40 minutes.

The jets flew within 100 miles (about 161 km) of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second-largest city which is home to Rafael Urdaneta Air Base, one of the main military air bases in western Venezuela, according to a report from the Miami Herald.

Data from Sweden's FlightRadar24 showed the jets flying over the northern tip of Lake Maracaibo, above the waters of the Gulf of Venezuela, and between the cities of La Guajira, in Zulia state, and Coro, the capital of Falcon state. Zulia state is a key oil and gas producing region in Venezuela, while Falcon state has some of the country’s biggest refineries.

FlightRadar24 data also showed a U.S. MQ-4C Triton drone flying close to Venezuela’s coast on Tuesday, although it did not appear to enter Venezuelan airspace.

Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Yvan Gil warned on Tuesday that the U.S. actions pose an extremely serious challenge to regional security and peace.

The president of Venezuela's National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez Gomez, said that the U.S. military activities around the country were not intended to "combat drug trafficking", as the U.S, claims, but to attack and destroy Venezuela.

Iran warned that the recent situation poses a threat to peace in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by telephone on Tuesday and reiterated his country's "willingness to stand by Venezuela", the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry reported.

Pezeshkian also said that U.S. provocations of Venezuela "violate the principles of international law and constitute a dangerous precedent for the peoples of the world."

U.S. fighter jets enter Venezuelan airspace as tensions escalate