The Chinese Drama Awards celebrate one of the most productive and passionately followed corners of global television: the Chinese drama industry, from sweeping xianxia and wuxia fantasy to grand historical costume epics and modern romance. This is an annual campaign, part of the iFANN Drama Awards, built to give C-drama the recognition its worldwide fandom already gives it.
It is an industry award, not a nationality contest. What we honor is the craft, the storytelling, and the sheer reach of Chinese drama, and the winners are chosen by an international fan base rather than only viewers inside China. Voting runs for about four months each year, from September to December, across three categories.
What the award honors
The Chinese Drama Awards cover three categories: Best Chinese Drama for the standout series of the year, Best Chinese Actor, and Best Chinese Actress. Together they recognize the productions and the performances that defined a year of C-drama, whether that meant a costume epic that ran for dozens of episodes or a modern romance that took over group chats.
This is a celebration of an industry, not a single show or a single studio. Xianxia and wuxia fantasy, palace and dynasty dramas, historical sagas, and contemporary love stories all belong here. If a Chinese drama made a year worth watching, this is where it gets its due.
An industry with global reach
Chinese dramas have become a genuine global habit. Their costume epics and romances draw enormous streaming audiences across Southeast Asia, and increasingly worldwide, carried by subtitled streaming and the dedicated fan communities that translate, clip, and discuss every episode. Titles that once traveled slowly now reach viewers on well over a hundred markets within days of airing.
That global pull is exactly what iFANN stands for. Celebrating an industry with worldwide reach and worldwide fans is the whole point, so these awards are decided by that international audience. The fan who discovered a wuxia series through subtitles in another language counts every bit as much as one watching it at home.
Who votes and who is honored
Anyone who loves Chinese drama can take part, wherever they are in the world. The award is open to the series, the actors, and the actresses working across the industry, and the people deciding the outcome are the fans who actually watch and champion these shows online.
Because the voting base is international, a winner reflects real global support rather than a single regional fan block. A performance that connected with viewers in Bangkok, Manila, London, and São Paulo can rise on the strength of that shared enthusiasm.
Our selection philosophy
The process begins with fans submitting the people and works they believe deserve recognition. iFANN's internal editorial team reviews every nomination for category fit, eligibility, identity, duplication, and abuse. Accepted nominees join the public ballot. After public voting closes, the iFANN International Editorial Board independently ranks the five finalists.
Winners are then decided the way every iFANN Award is decided: fan votes account for 60% of the final score, and the independent editorial board accounts for the remaining 40%. Fans stay at the center throughout, and the panel is there to add professional judgment, not to overrule the audience.
What a Chinese Drama Award includes
Winners are celebrated and actively promoted across the iFANN social media platform, given proper media coverage, and featured on the iFANN Pop Show, which reaches entertainment and pop culture fans around the world. It is recognition built to travel as far as the dramas themselves.
Each winner also receives a physical engraved iFANN trophy, shipped directly to them or kept safe in the iFANN library until they are ready to receive it, along with a permanent place in the iFANN awards archive.
Best Chinese Drama
Best Chinese Drama honors the finest C-drama of the year, drawn from an industry that produces scripted television on a scale few can match. The category spans the full range of Chinese storytelling, from opulent xianxia and wuxia costume fantasies and tense palace intrigue to grounded modern romances and family dramas, streamed to hundreds of millions on platforms like iQIYI, Tencent Video and Youku.
Nominations are open across every genre and platform, and fans put forward the series that held them across long, ambitious seasons. This award marks the Chinese drama that most captured audiences at home and among the large international following C-dramas now command.
Best Chinese Actor
Best Chinese Actor celebrates the leading men of Chinese drama, actors as convincing in sweeping historical costume epics as in intimate contemporary stories. Chinese productions demand real endurance and range, often across fifty episodes or more, and their biggest stars reach audiences numbering in the hundreds of millions.
This category recognizes the standout male performance of the year, in a lead or key supporting role. Fans nominate the actors whose work anchored their favorite series, reflecting the breadth of an industry that moves between fantasy epic, period drama and modern romance.
Best Chinese Actress
Best Chinese Actress honors the women of Chinese television, from the heroines of grand costume fantasies to the leads of sleek modern city dramas. Chinese series ask their stars to carry long and ambitious stories, and the finest actresses do it with a presence that travels well beyond China.
The award recognizes the year's best female performance across leading and supporting roles. Fans put forward the actresses whose work defined their favorite dramas, celebrating both major stars and the new names rising through a fiercely competitive industry.