Mumbai: IMDb, the world’s most popular and authoritative source for information on movies, TV shows, and celebrities, has unveiled 10 Years of Streaming
in India — An IMDb Report 2026. Based on page views from more than 250 million monthly visitors to IMDb worldwide, the report analyses the Top 10 Most Popular Indian Series for each year from 2016 to 2026. It also examines the wider universe of Indian series to understand trends beyond the most popular titles, including the evolution of audience preferences, the emergence of streaming franchises, and shifts in production and consumption.
The MVPs of Streaming
In the report, Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Vikrant Massey, Jitendra Kumar, Kapil Sharma, and Sunil Grover emerged as ‘The MVPs of Streaming’, described as actors who build breadth with a franchise at the centre. These stars were able to move between series while returning to a world that keeps bringing audiences back. Pankaj Tripathi is the clearest example of this, with Mirzapur, Criminal Justice, and Sacred Games all recurring in the IMDb Top 10 chart in the report, giving him both range across IPs and exceptional staying power.
Pankaj Tripathi on streaming
Tripathi shared, “The IMDb report on 10 Years of Streaming in India captures something I have felt over the past decade but never seen mapped out so clearly. When I started in streaming, there was no proven path for actors. There was no guarantee that audiences would follow a series the way they followed a film. But streaming opened up new avenues for storytelling, allowing actors to explore complex characters and connect with audiences across the country and beyond. I have been fortunate that Kaleen Bhaiya and Madhav Mishra found their audiences and kept them coming back. As the medium evolves, I look forward to being part of stories that entertain, challenge, and stay with audiences long after the credits roll.”
