Bilibili’s latest international push looks, at first glance, like another Chinese tech platform trying to win users overseas. But for US brands, that may be the least interesting part of the story.
In August 2026, Bilibili relaunched its international app as part of a broader push beyond China. The Android app is now live, identity verification has been removed for overseas users, and Bilibili is recruiting international creators while developing an English language website. An iOS version has also been announced but was not yet available at launch.
The bigger opportunity runs in the opposite direction.
Bilibili is making it easier for Western creators and content to enter an ecosystem with more than 376 million monthly active users, most of them still in China. That potentially creates a new bridge between content produced in the US and consumers who would never discover it on YouTube.
And that makes Bilibili’s global expansion much more relevant to marketers than the usual debate about whether it can compete with YouTube.
Bilibili’s international presence itself is not entirely new. An international version existed previously and was later discontinued.
What is different this time is the amount of infrastructure being built around the expansion.
The relaunched international app removes one of the most obvious barriers for overseas creators: identity verification. Previously, international users wanting to publish on Bilibili’s main Chinese platform could be required to submit documents such as a passport. The new international version allows much easier registration.
Bilibili has also said that its Chinese and international services will share the same content rather than operating as completely separate ecosystems.
Alongside the app, the company is:
The last point needs some caution. The international creator marketplace was described as in development, not as an already available advertising product. The same applies to the planned English website.
Still, the direction is fairly clear.
Bilibili does not just want people outside China watching Chinese videos. It wants overseas creators participating in its content ecosystem.
Bilibili is already a very large platform.
In its first quarter 2026 results, the company reported more than 376 million monthly active users, 115.2 million daily active users and an average of 119 minutes spent on the platform per active user each day. That daily usage figure was up 11 minutes from the previous year.
The attention level matters.
A lot of China’s social media growth over the past decade has been shaped by increasingly short content. Douyin perfected the endless short video feed. Xiaohongshu became an important discovery and recommendation platform. WeChat continues to sit across communication, content and services.
Bilibili occupies a different part of that landscape. People often go there because they are willing to spend time with a subject.
Gaming remains important. So do anime and entertainment. But the platform has moved well beyond the stereotype of being somewhere teenagers go to watch animation.
Bilibili’s 2025 annual report highlights major communities around lifestyle, games, entertainment, knowledge and technology. AI related content watch time rose 73% during 2025, while areas such as travel, fashion and consumer focused content also continued growing.
Its audience is growing up too.
Bilibili said the average age of its users reached around 26 in 2025. That matters because a community originally built around younger internet culture is increasingly moving into higher income life stages and making bigger purchasing decisions.
Advertisers seem to have noticed. Bilibili’s advertising revenue increased 30% year on year in Q1 2026 to RMB2.59 billion.
For marketers looking at Bilibili marketing in China, this is probably more important than the headline about Bilibili “challenging YouTube.”
There is already a commercially valuable audience sitting on the other side.
Calling Bilibili the Chinese YouTube is useful if you have ten seconds to explain the platform. It becomes less useful once you start planning a campaign.
Both platforms are built heavily around video and creators. Both can support longer content. Both have communities built around specialist interests.
But the culture of Bilibili is distinctly Chinese.
One of its best known features is danmu, or bullet comments. Comments appear directly across a video at the point viewers submit them, turning watching into something closer to a collective experience.
Creators on Bilibili are commonly known as UP creators. Communities can be extremely engaged around particular interests, personalities and subcultures.
That changes how brands need to think about content.
A polished 30 second global campaign video might technically upload perfectly well. It may still feel completely foreign once it lands there.
For a US marketing team trying to understand where Bilibili belongs, it helps to stop thinking of China’s platforms as direct copies of Western ones.
Platform | Where it tends to be strongest |
YouTube | Global video distribution, entertainment, education and search driven video discovery |
Bilibili | Deeper video content, specialist communities, gaming, technology, knowledge and interest driven content in China |
Douyin | Short video discovery, entertainment, livestreaming and social commerce |
Xiaohongshu / RedNote | Product research, recommendations, lifestyle discovery, reviews and purchase consideration |
There is overlap everywhere.
A beauty brand could use all three Chinese platforms. So could an automotive company. The content would simply serve different jobs.
A Xiaohongshu post might answer, “Is this product worth buying?” A Douyin video might create the initial desire. A Bilibili video has more room to explain how something works, compare alternatives, tell a longer story or let a credible creator explore the product properly.
That difference is important.
Bilibili works especially well when customers want to research and understand a product before making a decision.
Technically, this is becoming much easier. Strategically, brands should be careful.
Bilibili already has creator tools designed to help with content management and translation, and its broader international expansion includes a stronger focus on localization. Bilibili Studio can automatically translate videos into Chinese for domestic audiences.
That creates an obvious temptation.
Take the company’s existing YouTube library, translate everything into Chinese and start uploading.
There are situations where that makes sense.
Product demonstrations, expert interviews, tutorials, documentaries, technical explainers and educational videos may already contain material that is genuinely useful to Chinese viewers.
The raw footage does not suddenly become useless because it was filmed in California rather than Shanghai.
But translation is only one layer of localization.
Titles may need changing. Thumbnails may need changing. The opening hook may need to be rewritten. Cultural references can fall flat. Calls to action may point to services Chinese users cannot access. Even the questions consumers want answered can be different.
Machine translated subtitles cannot fix any of that.
A better approach is to ask:
Sometimes that means a relatively light localization job. Sometimes it means keeping the original idea and rebuilding almost everything around it.
The international expansion does not replace Bilibili’s existing commercial ecosystem in China.
Brands already have several ways to use the platform.
For brands with enough material to sustain it, an official Bilibili presence can create a long term content library around the subjects their customers care about.
The mistake is treating the account like a dumping ground for global campaign assets.
A technology brand might build content around product comparisons and tutorials. An education organization might answer detailed questions about studying abroad. A tourism brand might go beyond destination montages and publish itineraries, transport guides or deeper cultural content.
Bilibili works better when the viewer gets something useful for spending time with you.
Creator partnerships are one of the more natural routes onto the platform.
Bilibili already operates native advertising infrastructure that allows brands to collaborate with creators and integrate products into creator content. Its SEC filings describe native advertising produced by creators and embedded naturally within their videos, alongside brand and performance advertising formats.
This can be much more convincing than asking a brand account with no community history to suddenly start talking to Chinese consumers.
The creator matters, though. Follower count alone is a weak way to choose one. Audience fit, subject expertise, comment quality, content style and credibility inside a niche usually tell you more.
Bilibili offers brand, performance and native advertising formats.
Those include feed advertising, video and image placements, homepage and opening screen formats, customized brand placements and creator led native advertising.
The platform can therefore play across several stages of the funnel, from awareness through to more performance focused campaigns.
That does not mean paid media should automatically come first.
For brands completely unfamiliar with Bilibili, learning what content resonates can be more valuable than immediately buying reach.
Bilibili is not a channel every American company entering China suddenly needs.
For some brands, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, WeChat or search will deserve the budget first.
The strongest Bilibili opportunities tend to appear when there is something worth explaining, demonstrating or getting genuinely interested in.
That makes the platform particularly interesting for areas such as:
Even within these categories, audience fit matters more than the platform’s total user number.
A highly technical brand may find a relatively small Bilibili community far more commercially useful than millions of casual impressions elsewhere.
This is probably the most important distinction.
An American creator can have an easier way to register. A brand may be able to reuse more of its existing video assets. Translation technology can make content accessible faster.
None of that automatically answers:
What are Chinese consumers actually interested in?
Which creators do they trust?
What language do they use when discussing the category?
What competitors are already established?
What claims need to be localized?
Where does someone go after watching the video?
How does Bilibili connect with Xiaohongshu, Douyin, WeChat, Tmall or the rest of the brand’s China customer journey?
Those questions remain local.
If anything, easier publishing makes them more important. When the technical barrier disappears, poor localization becomes much easier to see.
For the right brand, Bilibili deserves a fresh look in 2026.
Not because it has suddenly become another global social platform that every marketing team needs to add to its dashboard. The more interesting opportunity runs in the opposite direction.
Bilibili is opening its existing Chinese video ecosystem to international creators. It is making registration easier, improving localization and building infrastructure intended to bring more global content onto the platform.
That gives US brands with useful video content something they did not have before: a potentially simpler route into one of China’s largest and most engaged video communities.
The smart response is not to upload the entire YouTube channel tomorrow.
Start by finding where your brand actually overlaps with Bilibili’s communities. Look at what Chinese consumers are already watching in your category. Identify the content you already own that has genuine value there.
Then localize from the audience backwards.
Because Bilibili may be going global. But its audience in China is still very much local.
Bilibili is one of China’s major video and online community platforms. It first became known for anime, comics and gaming, but its content now extends across technology, lifestyle, education, entertainment, travel and many other interests.
Bilibili reported more than 376 million monthly active users and 115.2 million daily active users in Q1 2026. Average daily time spent reached 119 minutes per active user.
Yes. Bilibili’s international expansion is making it easier for overseas creators to access the platform. For brands targeting mainland China, however, publishing content, operating an official presence, advertising and working with creators still require a China specific strategy.
Yes. Bilibili supports brand, performance and native advertising, including creator produced native advertising. Advertising on Bilibili should be planned separately from simply creating an account through its international app.
Yes, particularly for tutorials, educational content, expert interviews and product demonstrations. But translation alone is rarely enough. Titles, thumbnails, messaging, cultural references and calls to action may need to be adapted for Chinese audiences and Bilibili’s platform culture.
Neither platform is universally better. Douyin is particularly strong for short form discovery, entertainment, livestreaming and commerce. Bilibili can be stronger for deeper content, product explanation and specialist communities. The right choice depends on the audience, category and role the platform needs to play in the customer journey.
