'Spodyssey' set to drive German cinema ticket sales above 100 million

More than 100 million cinema tickets could be sold in Germany this year for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, as the "Spodyssey" phenomenon builds on strong first-half figures. 

Ticket sales over the first six months of 2026 reached around 47.5 million, the Federal Film Board (FFA) said on Monday, representing a 16.9% rise year-on-year. 

Revenue was around €502.2 million ($588 million), up 24.5% over the same period.

The promising figures come as German cinemas enjoyed a bumper summer driven by the success of two Hollywood blockbusters: Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" and "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," which were both released in July.

Drawing on the coining of "Barbenheimer" - a mashup of 2023 releases "Barbie" and Nolan's "Oppenheimer" - US media have dubbed the latest sensation "Spodyssey."

"If the positive trend continues, 2026 could become the strongest cinema year since the pandemic," said FFA chief executive Peter Dinges.

The industry was looking ahead to the coming months with great confidence, he added. 

The first half of the year delivered the best result for cinemas since the Covid-19 pandemic, the FFA said, but ticket sales were 6 million under the level of 2019 even as revenue climbed 9% due to higher prices.

In 2019, around 119 million cinema tickets were sold in total. When the coronavirus spread the following year, cinemas across Germany were forced to close. The film industry experienced an unprecedented enforced shutdown, and ticket sales recovered only slowly in the years that followed.

The new "Spider-Man" has delivered the most successful US box office opening in cinema history in terms of revenue. 

In Germany, the blockbuster also achieved not only the best opening for a "Spider-Man" film ever, but also the strongest opening of the year so far, according to the trade publication THE SPOT media & film.

The most popular film of the first half of 2026 in Germany was the animated feature "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie," which drew around 3.7 million ticket buyers. In second place was the Michael Jackson biopic "Michael," with around 2.8 million tickets sold, followed by "The Devil Wears Prada 2" with around 2.6 million tickets.

Around one in four cinema tickets sold in the first half of the year was for a German film - the highest share in the past 10 years, excluding the pandemic year of 2020, the FFA said.

Cinema visits have become slightly more expensive. The average ticket price in the first half of the year was €10.57, compared with €9.92 in the same period last year.

Christine Berg, chief executive of cinema industry association HDF Kino, spoke of a "tangible sense of optimism," saying the first half of the cinema year had been significantly more successful than in previous years.

"The race to catch up with pre-pandemic levels - with 2019 - is continuing. By the end of the year we could reach the 100 million cinema visits mark and would then have achieved another major milestone," she said.