In the first half of 2026, the market for pirated video content in Russia grew by 4.2% and reached $17.3 million, according to a study by F6, as cited by Kommersant. According to analysts' estimates, this is the first growth in the volume of illegal video since 2019 — after several years of stagnation and decline. Market participants explain the rise by the sustained viewer demand for foreign films, which are not always available on legal platforms at the time of premiere.

Traffic growth against the backdrop of a legal streaming boom

In parallel with the expansion of the pirated segment, analysts recorded an increase in search traffic to illegal portals: queries for pirated resources grew by 5.7%. Meanwhile, the traffic to legal streaming platforms over the same period increased significantly more — by 19.6%. Thus, the video content market as a whole is expanding, and piracy is growing not at the expense of an audience outflow from legal services, but as an additional, competing channel of consumption.

Premieres end up online less often, but foreign film leads

The share of film premieres that ended up in the pirated network in the first half of 2026 fell to 38% of theatrical releases (255 projects in total) versus over 52% in the first half of 2025. Foreign premieres continue to end up in illegal access noticeably more often than Russian ones: over the period, about 57% of theatrical releases were leaked online versus 10% of Russian ones. For comparison, in the first half of 2025 these figures were about 70% and 15%, respectively.

How pirates bypass blocks

To evade blocks, illegal platforms use various tricks. In January, F6 specialists found that on a number of pirated resources content becomes available only after 18:00 and on weekends — presumably, this allows bypassing regulator checks during working hours. In addition, pirates disguise themselves as legal services, using the names of major online cinemas in domain names, which makes it harder to identify illegal sites.

Contradictory data

In the source's wording on the dynamics of the share of premieres in the pirated network, there is a discrepancy in the figures: it states a decline to 38% 'versus over 52% in the first half of 2025 and 24% in 2024 — 48%'. It is unclear which exact figure refers to 2024 — 24% or 48% — which may be either a typo in the original text or a result of using different counting methodologies in different periods. Also deserving of separate attention is an apparent contradiction: despite the decline in the share of premieres in the pirated network (from 52% to 38%), the total volume of the illegal video market still grew by 4.2%. This is explained by the fact that different metrics reflect different aspects of the market — the share of new releases and the total traffic/consumption volume, which is also supported by the library of already released films.

View of the legal industry

At the online cinema Wink, it was noted that the illegal distribution of content by rights holders that have left the Russian market is thriving. The service's CEO Anton Volodkin emphasized that this negatively affects the legal industry, and the key problem remains the lack of the ability to file a complaint about the illegal distribution of content in the interest of a third party if the rights holder itself does not operate in the country. According to him, this creates a legal vacuum in which illegal copies of popular foreign films remain in open access.