Cinemalaya 2026: Did the Filipinos show up?

Did the Filipinos show up? Partly. In those same 7 buildings over those same 12 days, every other film on those screens averaged 24.6% full across 1,184 screenings. Roughly two Cinemalaya seats were filled for every one filled by the commercial titles playing beside them, 138 people a show against 67.

Cinemalaya accounted for 27.5% of all screenings in these cinemas, yet took 43.8% of all seats filled. The films also grew their audience as the festival went on, going from 21.9% full on the first Sunday to 62.5% by Thursday.

What was unfortunate was how few showtimes were available. Each of the five Ayala branches carried only 41 to 43 screenings across the entire 12-day run, and anyone who wanted to see these films had to work around that. More cinemas carrying them would likely have changed these numbers.

A few notes before the decks below. A festival is nothing like a wide release. There are fewer showtimes, audiences often travel specifically to see these films, and scarcity itself can help fill rooms, so none of this proves that these films would perform the same way in a normal commercial release. The weather may also have played a role, especially given the flooding and generally severe conditions throughout August.

What I can say is that in the rooms these films were given, people chose them at roughly twice the rate they chose what was playing on the next screen, and they kept choosing them more as the festival went on.

Cinemalaya 22 gave us good films made by people who worked hard on them. It would have been nice to give them more visibility by giving Filipino films wider releases, so more Filipinos could appreciate them.

Below are some of the analytics I collected across the 12 days.

Cinemalaya published its own Box Office Hits, a top four per venue. I match their first or second place at nearly every venue and drift apart below that, because their list is ranked on money collected and this counts people in seats.