China's Spring Festival Gala to showcase horse-inspired tech stage design

The 2026 Spring Festival Gala, China's most-watched annual television event, will air Monday night with a stage design that fuses cutting-edge technology and traditional aesthetics, featuring horse-inspired installations to symbolize strength and progress.

Falling on Tuesday this year, the Spring Festival, or the Chinese New Year, ushers in the Year of the Horse, the seventh animal in the Chinese zodiac. The Gala, themed "Galloping Steed, Onward Unstoppable," will present a diverse lineup of performances ranging from singing and dance to opera, martial arts, skits and magic. Its live broadcast on New Year's Eve has become a cherished tradition in hundreds of millions of homes.

The main stage features an artistic installation inspired by the horse, a cultural symbol of strength and ceaseless progress. The design aims to immerse viewers in an atmosphere of joy and prosperity, conveying the vitality of the Year of the Horse.

Visual Director Jiang Yuhao said the Gala's centerpiece stage installation is a programmable matrix, combining innovation with symbolism to capture the festive spirit and forward momentum of the new year.

"The technology department of the China Media Group developed the numerical control matrix device, which includes more than 300 modules and 5,584 individual flip panels, forming a powerful visual of eight galloping horses," Jian said.

"The stage design seeks to depict the scene of 10,000 horses charging forth in line with this year's theme: 'Galloping Steed, Onward Unstoppable.' The horse-themed installation is a numerical control matrix structure. It is designed with three different materials on its surfaces and features three colors -- gold, silver, and red. The numerical control matrix can undergo a flipping transformation. Combined with the lighting effect, it generates a myriad of color reflections. Throughout the entire performance, the stage structure, while flipping and moving, brings numerous and wondrous color changes," Guo Li, another visual director explained.

To amplify the immersive experience, this year's production incorporates advanced technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), AR (Augmented Reality), and XR (Extended Reality), creating a seamless fusion of physical and virtual worlds. These innovations enable performers to interact with dynamic digital environments, drawing audiences into a three-dimensional journey where reality and illusion blend in harmony.

China's Spring Festival Gala to showcase horse-inspired tech stage design

China's domestically developed T1200-grade ultra-high-strength carbon fiber holds broad application prospects in strategic emerging industries, according to its developer.

The country on Wednesday unveiled SYT80, a domestically developed T1200-grade ultra-high-strength carbon fiber, marking a major breakthrough in the China's high-performance carbon fiber technology.

This new material has achieved a hundred-tonne-level annual production capacity, making China the first nation to mass-produce this caliber of fiber, according to its developer, China National Building Material Group Co., Ltd. (CNBM).

Featuring lightweight and high-strength properties, the fiber's diameter is less than one-tenth that of a human hair, and yet its tensile strength is 10 times that of ordinary steel and its density is only one-quarter of steel's.

"Compared with the previous-generation T1100, T1200 has seen its tensile strength increase by more than 14 percent. With its ultimate lightweight and high-strength characteristics, T1200 can achieve weight reduction of over 10 percent for equipment in related fields. It holds broad application prospects in strategic emerging industries such as commercial aerospace, low-altitude economy, and humanoid robots," said Chen Qiufei, head of T1200 ultra-high-strength carbon fiber research and development at Zhongfu Shenying Carbon Fiber Company, a subsidiary of China National Building Material Group.

The new material also possesses many other outstanding properties.

As the fiber undergoes carbonization at nearly 2,000 degrees Celsius during production, its chemical properties remain stable and its corrosion resistance is excellent.

This fiber material also features strong fire and flame retardant properties, offering good safety performance.

The development of this fiber material demonstrates China's fully independent and controllable capabilities across the entire industrial chain of high-performance carbon fiber, spanning technologies and equipment as well as the transition from laboratory research to mass production, said Zhou Yuxian, chairman of CNBM.

China's high-strength carbon fiber shows strong potential in strategic emerging industries