World
In Tibet, Chinese Boarding Schools Reshape the ‘Souls of Children’
Across China’s west, the party is placing children in boarding schools in a drive to assimilate a generation of Tibetans into the national mainstream and mold them into citizens loyal to the Communist Party.
Tibetan rights activists, as well as experts working for the United Nations, have said that the party is systematically separating Tibetan children from their families to erase Tibetan identity and to deepen China’s control of a people who historically resisted Beijing’s rule. They have estimated that around three-quarters of Tibetan students age 6 and older — and others even younger — are in residential schools that teach largely in Mandarin, replacing the Tibetan language, culture and Buddhist beliefs that the children once absorbed at home and in village schools.
When China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, visited one such school in the summer, he inspected a dormitory that appeared freshly painted and as neat as an army barracks. He walked into a classroom where Tibetan students, listening to a lecture on Communist Party thought, stood and applauded to welcome him.
Mr. Xi’s visit to the school in Qinghai Province in June amounted to a firm endorsement of the program, despite international criticism. Education, he said, must “implant a shared consciousness of Chinese nationhood in the souls of children from an early age.”
Chinese officials say the schools help Tibetan children to quickly become fluent in the Chinese language and learn skills that will prepare them for the modern economy. They say that families voluntarily send their children to the schools, which are free, and that the students have classes in Tibetan culture and language.
But extensive interviews and research by The New York Times show that Tibetan children appear to be singled out by the Chinese authorities for enrollment in residential schools. Their parents often have little or no choice but to send them, experts, parents, lawyers and human rights investigators said in interviews. Many parents do not see their children for long stretches.
Dozens of research papers and reports from experts and teachers within the Chinese system have warned about the anxiety, loneliness, depression and other psychological harm of the schools on Tibetan children.
The Times reviewed and analyzed hundreds of videos posted to Chinese social media sites by Tibetan boarding schools, state media and local propaganda departments that showed how the schools operate and serve the party’s objectives.
Student life is heavy with political indoctrination. Schools, for instance, celebrate what China calls “Serfs’ Emancipation Day,” referring to the anniversary of the Communist Party’s full takeover of Tibet in 1959, after a failed Tibetan uprising and a Chinese crackdown that forced the Dalai Lama into exile. The party accuses the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, of having ruled over a slaveholding society.
The Times also found video accounts of boarding school teachers and travelers that showed how some schools are underfunded and overstretched. We are not crediting some of the accounts by name to avoid drawing a backlash against them.
China has been expanding its boarding schools for Tibetan children even as countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have been grappling with the trauma inflicted on generations of Indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their families and placed in residential schools. (President Biden in October apologized on behalf of the U.S. government for the abuse of Indigenous children in residential schools from the early 1800s to the late 1960s, calling it a “a sin on our soul.”)
China has been eager to show that happy, well-fed Tibetan children are proudly declaring that they are Chinese.
Chugqensumdo Town Tibetan Boarding Central Primary School/Tencent Video
Songpan County Caoyuan Township Central Primary School/WeChat
Strangers in Their Own Homes
Gyal Lo, a Tibetan education researcher, became alarmed by the boarding schools in 2016, when he saw that his two preschool-aged grandnieces, who were attending one in his hometown in northwestern China, preferred to speak Mandarin, not Tibetan.
When the grandnieces, then ages 4 and 5, went home on the weekend, he said in an interview, they appeared withdrawn and spoke awkwardly in Tibetan with their parents, much changed from when he saw them in the previous year. Now they behaved “like strangers in their own home,” he said.
“I said to my brother, ‘What if you don’t send them to the boarding school?’” Gyal Lo said. “He said he had no choice.”
Gyal Lo set out to investigate the changes that families were going through as the schools expanded across Tibetan regions in China. Over the next three years he visited dozens of such schools, and saw that many Tibetan students spoke little of their mother tongue and were sometimes only able to see their parents once every several weeks or even months.
Children as young as preschool age were being sent away, he said, and parental visits were limited. The Times talked to three Tibetan parents with children of elementary-school age in residential schools who said that they had no choice and that they were not allowed to visit their children at will.
Many Tibetan parents accept that their children should learn Chinese for a chance at better jobs, said Gyal Lo, who now lives in Canada and is an activist working to draw attention to the schools. But most also want their children to first gain a strong grounding in their mother tongue.
“Children should learn from their grandparents, their parents, about their local language, about the names of things, about their traditions and their values,” Gyal Lo said in an interview. “Boarding schools create a physical and emotional distance from their parents and family members.”
Under Mr. Xi, such schools have sharply cut classes in Tibetan. Instead most classes are taught in Chinese, a language unfamiliar to many rural Tibetan children, who mix little with the Han Chinese majority.
Chinese officials insist that enrollment is voluntary. In reality, the government has closed village schools and privately run Tibetan language schools, while strictly enforcing mandatory education laws.
“One can hardly speak of any choice if local schools are all closed down,” said Fernand de Varennes, a human rights expert.
He and two other independent experts with the United Nations investigated the boarding schools and expressed alarm in 2023 at what they said appeared to be a “policy of forced assimilation of the Tibetan identity into the dominant Han-Chinese majority.”
At Risk of Abuse and Neglect
The text messages and voice memos trickled in, carrying urgent questions from Tibetans in China seeking legal advice about the treatment of children in boarding schools.
One man wrote to ask about what redress to demand for a child who suffered permanent injury from a classroom fight while the teacher was absent. Another said that a child was found dead in the bathroom of a boarding school, of unclear causes, and that the child’s parents wanted answers. The questions had been sent over the past three years to volunteers offering online legal advice to Tibetans. Times reporters reviewed several such messages, which were shared with us, but were unable to independently verify the accounts.
In 2021, a video surfaced online showing an elementary schoolteacher in eastern Tibet beating a child with a chair in his classroom. The video circulated on the internet in China more than 1,000 times before it was taken down. The school at which the beating took place has been described in state media reports as having students who lived on campus.
The video set off a public outcry. In response, the local government conducted an investigation and said in an official statement that the beating had left a three-inch-long wound on the child’s forehead and that the teacher had been suspended.
Physical punishment is outlawed in Chinese schools, but studies by Chinese academics have found that the practice persists in Tibetan boarding schools. A 2020 study by Chinese researchers on boarding schools for children from ethnic minorities said that some teachers “lacked concern for the students,” treated them roughly and were “even resorting to physical punishment.”
Local legislators and researchers in Tibetan areas have reported that the already overcrowded schools face serious shortages of teachers and support staff.
A 16-year-old living in a Tibetan village in Sichuan Province told The Times that beatings by teachers were a constant at the residential school he attended. He said that over the years he had accumulated several scars on his back from beatings by teachers, sometimes by hand and other times with a wooden ruler.
A Generation of Cultural Erasure
The Chinese government does not say how many Tibetan children are in boarding schools. The Tibet Action Institute, an international group that has campaigned to close the schools, estimates that among children aged 6 to 18, the figure is at least 800,000 — or three in every four Tibetan children.
The group arrived at its estimate, which it published in a report in 2021, based on local government statistics. Lhadon Tethong, a co-founder and director of the group, likened the Chinese schools to the colonial residential schools in Canada, Australia and the United States.
“Different time, different place, different government, but same impact,” she said, “in the sense of breaking cultural and familial bonds and roots, and psychologically damaging and traumatizing kids at their foundation.”
Statistics collected by The Times from local government documents across Tibetan areas show similar numbers in boarding schools, with some areas notably higher than others.
In Golog, a Tibetan area of Qinghai Province, 95 percent of middle school students were in such schools, according to a study published in 2017 in China’s main journal on education for ethnic groups. A report from the local legislature in 2023 said that 45 of the 49 elementary schools in Golog were residential.
The expansion of boarding school enrollment in Tibetan areas runs counter to the national trend. Chinese government guidelines issued in 2018 say that elementary school children should not, in general, be sent to such schools.
But children from ethnic minorities in border regions seem to be treated as an exception. In the far western region of Xinjiang, children of the Muslim Uyghur ethnic group have also been sent to residential schools in large numbers.
Chinese officials say such schools help children in the Tibetan region avoid long commutes. But official websites also promote instructions from Mr. Xi on minority education, arguing that youth in ethnic minority regions were at risk of having “erroneous” ideas about religion, history and ethnic relations.
To counter those threats, Mr. Xi said in 2014, children of the right age should “study in school, live in school and grow up in school.” The government’s hope is that those children will then become champions of the Chinese language and the party’s values.
In one video, which appears to be filmed and uploaded on social media as part of a school assignment, a Tibetan fourth-grader at a boarding school described how she saved the day when a Chinese cashier could not understand the girl’s mother, who spoke only Tibetan. She then called on other students to teach their parents Mandarin. “Be a Civilized Person, Speak Mandarin,” the video was titled.
Warnings From Within China
China’s drive to assimilate the Tibetans echoes history elsewhere in the world where Indigenous people were seen by their foreign occupiers as savages who needed to be civilized with boarding schools, causing trauma and abuses. It’s a parallel that Chinese officials reject.
But some of the starkest warnings about the toll that boarding schools are taking on Tibetan children come, strikingly, from within China’s education system.
Teachers, education researchers and local legislators in China have written reports describing Tibetan children as suffering from being separated from their families and from being largely confined within their schools.
In education journals, teachers have shared advice on helping Tibetan children cope: Create a homier feel by decorating dorm rooms and cafeterias, and be ready for students to be anxious about when they could return home.
Many boarding schools in more remote Tibetan areas appear to be underfunded and lacking in facilities, teachers and trained counselors. Local lawmakers found in 2021 that one school for elementary children in Golog, the Tibetan area of Qinghai, had no tap water or power connection for its cafeteria until they complained.
“Because boarding schools lack staff like dormitory supervisors, security guards and medical carers, the teachers must take on 24-hour duty weeks while also fulfilling their daily teaching duties,” said a 2023 survey conducted by the Golog legislature.
In video diaries uploaded to social media, teachers in Tibetan regions have described days in which, on top of teaching, they must also deliver food to students, show them how to make beds and tuck them in at night.
A teacher at an elementary school in Tibet, who goes by Ms. Chen on social media, posted a series of video blogs in 2022. In one, she documented a typical day that started with a morning study session before dawn and ended with her checking on the children before bedtime.
Another teacher, who identifies himself as Mr. Su on social media, says he teaches at an elementary and secondary school in Ngari, Tibet. He shot a video while patrolling the dormitories of younger students while on duty one night in 2023.
“All of us are basically standing in as their parents,” he wrote in one social media post.
Videos from Chinese travelers show how difficult it can be for rural schools to meet the needs of their students. In 2021, a traveler who recorded a visit to one school in Garze, a Tibetan area in Sichuan Province, said that the dorms looked nice but that there weren’t enough beds. Two children shared a bed and huddled to keep each other warm in the winter, as there was no central heating.
Some teachers defend the schools as ultimately for the good of children. Others described encountering widespread opposition to the policy.
A 2023 study from Garze concluded that parents, teachers and school administrators were reluctant to send young children to boarding schools. Many parents, the study said, conveyed “helplessness, worry, incomprehension and an inability to speak out” about the changes.
Education, especially in minority areas, is a politically sensitive topic. Tibetans who oppose the boarding schools risk imprisonment if they protest. Tashi Wangchuk, a Tibetan businessman who petitioned the government to preserve schooling in Tibetan and spoke to The Times about his efforts, was sentenced to prison for five years in 2018.
Yet, some still voice their worries. On Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, parents lamented the diminishing role that the Tibetan language plays in their children’s lives.
“After just one month in kindergarten, my child basically no longer speaks Tibetan. Now when we speak to our child in Tibetan, they only respond in Mandarin,” one person wrote in a comment.
“No matter how we try to teach Tibetan now, they won’t learn it. I’m really heartbroken.”
World
Iran continues firing missiles, drones at neighboring states, with multiple interceptions reported
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Iran launched a new wave of attacks on Thursday, with explosions reported in the region and Tehran threatening that the U.S. would “bitterly regret” sinking an Iranian warship.
Iran’s strikes on Thursday targeted Israel, American bases and countries in the region. Israel announced multiple incoming missile attacks as air raid sirens blared in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense on Thursday said Iran used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in an attack on Nakhchivan International Airport and other civilian infrastructure. The ministry said the details of the attack and the capabilities of the UAVs were being investigated.
“The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan strongly condemns the attacks carried out by the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran against civilian infrastructure on the territory of Azerbaijan in the absence of any military necessity. The Islamic Republic of Iran bears the entire responsibility for the incident,” the ministry’s statement read.
Explosions seen and heard in Azerbaijan as Iran launches retaliatory attacks across the Middle East. (East2West)
Iran has not acknowledged targeting Azerbaijan, despite the country’s ministry of defense pointing the finger at Tehran.
Qatar evacuated residents near the U.S. Embassy in Doha on Thursday, with its Ministry of Defense confirming that the country was “subjected to a missile attack” and that its air defense systems were able to intercept it. The ministry urged the public to remain calm and avoid unofficial information.
Abu Dhabi announced that its authorities were responding to an incident involving falling debris in ICAD 2, which is part of the Industrial City of Abu Dhabi. Six people, identified by Abu Dhabi as Pakistani and Nepali nationals, suffered minor to moderate injuries.
A plume of smoke rises over buildings in Doha, Qatar, on March 5, 2026. (Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)
FORMER TOPGUN PILOT DECLARES IRAN MILITARY ‘OVER WITH’ AMID US AIR SUPERIORITY, BUT WARNS OF ANOTHER DANGER
Iran has carried out retaliatory strikes since the launch of Operation Epic Fury, with the latest wave coming one day after the U.S. sunk an Iranian warship, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors. Sri Lankan navy spokesman Cmdr. Buddhika Sampath said 32 people were rescued from the wreck and were admitted to a hospital.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended the move during a news briefing at the Pentagon.
“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo — Quiet Death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II. Like in that war, back when we were still the War Department, we are fighting to win,” Hegseth said.
Missile interceptions are seen in the sky on March 5, 2026, in Central Israel. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
ISRAEL’S MILITARY RELEASES VIDEO SHOWING OBLITERATION OF IRAN’S MISSILE LAUNCHERS, DEFENSE SYSTEMS
Iranian leaders condemned the attack, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accusing the U.S. Navy of committing “an atrocity at sea.” Meanwhile, Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli appeared on state television and called for the shedding of Israeli and “Trump’s blood.”
“Fight the oppressive America, his blood is on my shoulders,” he said in a rare call for violence from an ayatollah, one of the highest ranks within the clergy of Shiite Islam.
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The U.S. and Israel launched the war on Saturday with strikes targeting Iran’s leadership, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed. Iran’s missile arsenal and nuclear facilities were also hit.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related Article
Iran has launched operations targeting Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in neighbouring Iraq as the regional war ignited by the United States and Israel entered its sixth day, with more than 1,000 people killed across the country.
State television, Press TV, reported early on Thursday that Tehran was striking “anti-Iran separatist forces”, referring to Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups believed to be based in mountainous, hard-to-reach areas near the Iran-Iraq border.
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Iranian missiles hit Sulaimaniyah city in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, according to local reports.
“We targeted the headquarters of Kurdish groups opposed to the revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported on Thursday, quoting a military statement. The Iranian military said earlier on Tuesday it used “30 drones” on Kurdish positions.
The attack comes just days after multiple publications reported that US President Donald Trump was in active talks with Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups, and that Washington hopes to use them to spur a popular uprising.
Various Iranian Kurdish groups, which share close ties with Iraqi Kurds, have long opposed Tehran from their bases in northern Iraq and along the Iraq-Iran border. These groups reportedly have thousands of fighters between them.
Here’s what we know so far:
Why are Kurdish groups cooperating with the US?
US officials said the aim is to stretch Iranian forces and take out the remains of the military-dominated Iranian government, according to reporting by CNN.
There is also speculation that the groups could be supported to take control of northern Iran to create a ground buffer for Israeli forces, possibly streaming in from Iraq.
US-Israeli bombings have heavily targeted areas along the Iraq-Iran border since the start of the war on Saturday, possibly to degrade Iranian defences and allow Kurdish opposition groups to cross fully into Iran, according to a briefing by US-based think tank, the Soufan Center.
The US has not ruled out sending ground forces, although analysts told Al Jazeera Iran’s rugged territory would make that very difficult.
If the US does support these groups against Tehran, it would mean that Washington is treating them like armed “players on a board,” Winthrop Rodgers, associate fellow at the UK think tank, Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.
Which Kurdish groups are there?
Neither the US nor Kurdish groups had confirmed any agreements by Thursday.
However, it is known that Trump has spoken to the leaders of two Kurdish groups in Iraq: Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Bafel Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), according to US publication, Axios. Talabani confirmed the call on Wednesday.
Trump also spoke to Mustafa Hijri, head of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), on Tuesday, CNN reported, quoting a Kurdish official.
Meanwhile, Iranian Kurdish rebel groups, which have thousands of fighters along the Iraq-Iran border, formed the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan (CPFIK) alliance one week before the war broke out.
The group issued statements at the start of the conflict, signalling imminent intervention and urging Iranian military members to defect. According to Israel’s I24News, thousands of its fighters were in Iran by Wednesday.
Here are the different groups:
Kurdistan Democratic Party: The ruling party in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The party controls the capital city of Erbil as well as Duhok. It has historical ties with Iranian Kurdish groups.
However, the KRG is not eager to be seen as supporting attacks on Iran, even as Iranian drones have hit US assets in Erbil. On Wednesday, Kurdistan region President Nechirvan Barzani spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and told him his region “will not be part of conflicts” targeting Tehran.
In 2023, the two countries signed a security deal that saw Iraq promise to disarm and relocate Iranian opposition groups on its territory, although it appears many groups are still based there, reflecting the limited influence the government wields over them.
Iraqi Kurds, who have close ties with both the US and Iran, are in a “difficult position”, said Rodgers.
“They are under tremendous pressure from a wide range of forces, including (pro-Iran) Iraqi militias. They will try to stay out of the conflict as much as they can, but that will likely prove impossible,” he said.
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK): The PUK is the official opposition in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and also nationally relevant as Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid is a member. In a statement on Sunday, Rashid urged dialogue and an end to the war. Iraq declared three days of mourning following the killing of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes on Tehran on Saturday.
Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan (CPFIK): Formed on February 22, 2026, the group includes six Iranian Kurdish opposition groups seeking an independent state.
Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) – Based in the Kurdistan region, the group has about 1,200 members and is proscribed as a “terror” group by Iran.
Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) – Also based in Kurdistan, it has an estimated 1,000 members.
Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) – A close ally of the Turkish opposition armed group, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), PJAK is proscribed as a “terror” group by Ankara. PJAK’s armed wing, the Eastern Kurdistan Units (YRK), is believed to have between 1,000 and 3,000 members, many of them women. It is based in the rugged Qandil Mountains near the Iran-Iraq border and in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region. It has launched numerous attacks on Iranian forces in the past decade. A recent Iranian strike reportedly killed one fighter.
Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan Struggle (Khabat) – It has an unknown number of fighters.
Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan – Based in Iraq’s KRG, it has an unknown number of fighters.
Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KPIK) – Also headquartered in the Kurdistan region, it has an estimated 1,000 fighters in 2017.
What is the history of US involvement with Kurdish resistance groups in the Middle East?
Kurds are an ethnic minority spread across the Middle East with a shared language and culture. They do not have a state of their own and have historically been marginalised across countries – mainly Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkiye.
For decades, several armed Kurdish groups have sought self-governance in Turkiye, Syria and Iran.
In Iraq, Kurdish nationalist groups gained some success during the 1991 Gulf War by working with the US, which helped establish the self-governing Kurdistan region of Iraq. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also trained and armed its army, known as the Peshmerga, after the US invaded Iraq in 2003. In 2005, the semiautonomous region was officially recognised in Iraq’s constitution.
Since 2017, Washington has also armed and trained the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish militia that Turkiye lists as a “terror” group because of its links with the proscribed PKK. The group, which successfully resisted ISIL (ISIS), now forms the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It controlled Raqqa and other ISIL strongholds.
However, when it began military clashes with Syrian forces under the President Ahmed al-Sharaa-led government last August, Washington turned away from the group and backed Damascus instead. In January this year, the SDF signed an agreement with the Syrian government to integrate into the government forces. In return, the Syrian government recognised Kurdish rights.
In Turkiye, meanwhile, the PKK, whose presence in northern Iraq has long been a source of tension with Ankara, declared a ceasefire in March 2025, after a call from its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to disarm.
How does Kurdish resistance in Iran compare with others?
Iranian Kurds opposed the Iranian government even before the formation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Rodgers said, and Tehran’s current weakness provides an opportunity for them to advance their political aims in the country.
However, the new coalition of multiple diverse groups is unprecedented, the analyst added, and their internal dynamics will be a key decisive factor in what role Kurdish groups will play in this war.
“Support from the US is helpful, especially in terms of targeting security forces’ infrastructure with air strikes, but they will likely be cautious about relying too much on Washington, especially from an administration as capricious and disorganised as Trump’s,” Rodgers said, noting how Washington abandoned the Kurds in Syria.
Unlike the split Iranian movements, Iraqi Kurds have long united to form a devolved government enshrined in the Iraqi constitution, built an advanced economy, and secured substantive relations with a wide range of foreign countries. That’s something Kurdish groups will also be hoping to establish in a democratic Iran, he said.
“I think it is unlikely that the Trump administration has made any commitments to the Iranian Kurds about supporting their political goals,” Rodgers said, adding that the US’s plan “does not look fully thought through at all”.
World
Netflix, After Walking Away From Warner Bros. Deal, Will ‘Move Forward’ With ‘$2.8 Billion in Our Pocket That We Didn’t Have a Few Weeks Ago,’ CFO Says
Netflix is no longer contemplating a future that includes Warner Bros., having ceded the heated M&A battle to Paramount Skydance. Netflix CFO Spence Neumann, speaking Wednesday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, reiterated the company’s position that it bailed out of the bidding for Warner Bros. because Paramount increased its offer price.
“The short answer is, it was all about price,” Neumann said. “We said all along this opportunity was a nice-to-have at the right price, not a must-have at any price,” he added, echoing Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ previous statement.
Netflix, when it struck the deal to buy WB’s studios and streaming business in December, was playing “offense, not defense,” Neumann said. According to the CFO, Netflix has a “unique view” into how to value the WBD assets. “We went into it with a point of view on price,” he said. “When it became clear it didn’t make sense for us financially anymore,” the company bowed out.
“Now we move forward, and we move forward with $2.8 billion in our pocket that we didn’t have a few weeks ago,” said Neumann, referring to the breakup fee it received from Paramount Skydance.
On Feb. 26, Netflix abandoned its deal to buy Warner Bros.’s studios and streaming business after David Ellison’s Paramount upped its hostile bid for WBD in its entirety to $31/share — leaving Paramount the winner of a debt-fueled takeover of the media conglomerate. Paramount Skydance paid Netflix the $2.8 billion breakup fee once Warner Bros. Discovery terminated its agreement with Netflix in favor of Paramount’s “superior” offer.
Asked if the Warner Bros. bidding war changed Netflix’s M&A strategy, Neumann replied, “I know it sounds boring, but it’s really no change.” The company will “continue to stay focused on what are those opportunities” to accelerate the growth of the business, he said.
Neumann said Netflix, by the end of the bidding process for Warner Bros., had “a stronger belief” that “we would have been great stewards” for those assets. And, he insisted, Netflix had high confidence that it had a “clear path” to regulatory approval.
“At the end of the day, we were going to be disciplined” on the price it was willing to pay for Warner Bros., Neumann said.
In 2026, Netflix plans to boost its total cash content spending to around $20 billion, up 10% from last year. It is forecasting revenue of $50.7 billion-$51.7 billion, which would be an increase of 12%-14% year over year, and projects hitting 31.5% operating margin in 2026. The streaming heavyweight reported more than 325 million subscribers worldwide as of the end of 2025, up from 301.2 million a year prior.
The expected 10% increase in Netflix’s content spending this year is in line with its expected revenue growth, Neumann said. “It’s really no change in our approach,” he said. “We really want to be that starting point and destination for professionally produced content for creators around the world.”
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