2027 Upcoming Cdrama: What Is Actually Confirmed

Joy of Life Season 3

The most-requested Chinese sequel of the decade is on Tencent Video's 2027 slate. Here is what the announcement actually says.

What is actually confirmed

Tencent Video's 2027 slate presentation included Joy of Life Season 3, with Zhang Ruoyun attached to return as Fan Xian. That is the solid part: a platform, a year and a lead actor. Everything else, including the number of episodes, the director's schedule and whether the season adapts the rest of the novel in one go, has not been confirmed in public.

The second season ended with Fan Xian's position in the capital more dangerous than ever, and the show has a large cast of characters whose contracts and availability will determine how quickly production can move. Treat any "official release date" you see on social media as unverified until Tencent posts a trailer with a date.

Why the delay is normal

Joy of Life is a costume drama with a huge ensemble, location work and a script that has to compress a long novel. Chinese sequels of this scale routinely take two to three years between seasons. The first season aired in 2019, the second in 2024, and a 2027 third season fits that rhythm rather than signalling trouble.

What to watch first

If you have not started, begin with Season 1 and expect a comedy of manners wrapped inside a political thriller. Fan Xian arrives in the capital as a clever outsider, and the pleasure is watching him learn which rules can be bent and which will kill him. Our guide to Nirvana in Fire covers the more serious end of the same court-intrigue tradition.

What to expect from Season 3

The source novel's later chapters move from court manoeuvring into open conflict between the kingdom and its neighbours. A third season would likely need to spend more on battle sequences and less on the drawing-room comedy that made the first season distinctive. Whether the show can keep its tone while raising the stakes is the open question.

How to follow it without rumours

Watch Tencent Video's official account and the platform's annual slate event. Casting leaks and "insider" release dates circulate constantly; the only reliable signal is a platform-issued trailer or a dated poster. We update this page when that happens.

Three-Body: Dark Forest

Tencent's Three-Body adaptation was a rare hard-sci-fi success. The second book is much harder to film.

What is confirmed

Tencent Video announced Three-Body: Dark Forest as part of its 2027 line-up. The title refers to the second novel in Liu Cixin's trilogy, the book that introduces the "dark forest" theory of cosmic sociology and the character Luo Ji. No cast or episode count has been published.

The first Tencent adaptation, released in 2023, was a faithful, slow-burning adaptation of the first novel. It was praised for respecting the science and for a production that treated the book's ideas as the spectacle. The sequel has a harder job: the second book jumps across decades, includes a long virtual-reality sequence and ends with a confrontation that is mostly intellectual.

Why this one is difficult to adapt

The first novel is a mystery: scientists discover a countdown, a conspiracy and an alien fleet. The second is a strategy problem. Its most famous scenes involve a man explaining a theory, not a battle. A television adaptation has to make that legible without turning into a lecture, which is why this project has been watched closely by science-fiction readers outside China.

What the book covers

Without spoiling the plot, the story follows humanity's response to the knowledge that an alien civilisation is on its way. Deterrence, deception and the question of whether intelligent life can ever safely reveal itself are the core themes. Readers who enjoyed the first season's mix of physics and bureaucratic dread will recognise the tone.

Who should care

If you liked the first season's patience and its willingness to let scientists be the heroes, this is the sequel to track. New viewers should start with the 2023 series rather than jumping in here, because the second story assumes the first. For a different kind of Chinese genre production, our donghua section covers animated science-fantasy that moves much faster.

Release expectations

A 2027 listing is a slate slot, not a promise. Tencent has moved large productions before. We will update this page when a trailer or date appears.

Sword Snow Stride Season 2

A wuxia series that spent its first season refusing to be a power fantasy. The second season has a lot of travel left.

What is confirmed

Tencent Video's 2027 slate includes Sword Snow Stride Season 2. The first season, released in 2021, adapted a popular wuxia novel about a young lord who travels the country with a masked servant and a series of increasingly dangerous companions. The second season is expected to continue that journey, but the platform has not published details.

What the first season did well

The show was unusual for a wuxia drama because its hero was not trying to become the strongest fighter. Xu Fengnian is a spoiled heir who would rather drink and flirt, and the series treated his refusal to be a hero as a character flaw rather than a quirk. The fighting was fast and lightly stylised, and the road structure let the world expand episode by episode.

What a second season needs to solve

The first season ended with Xu Fengnian's position in the northern court still unstable and several major martial artists unaccounted for. A sequel has to decide how much time to spend on politics versus travel, and whether to keep the first season's dry comedy. Fans of the novel will also be watching for the introduction of characters who were held back.

How it fits the 2027 slate

Tencent's 2027 line-up leans heavily on sequels to proven hits: Joy of Life Season 3, Guardians of the Dafeng Season 2 and this one. That is a bet on existing audiences rather than new IP, which makes sense in a crowded market but leaves less room for experiments.

Should you start the first season now

Yes, if you like wuxia with a sense of humour and do not need a morally serious hero. If you want a tighter, darker martial-arts story, our The Untamed guide is a better starting point.

Guardians of the Dafeng Season 2

A comedy-fantasy about a modern office worker in a supernatural empire gets a second season. The tone is the whole appeal.

What is confirmed

Guardians of the Dafeng Season 2 is on Tencent Video's 2027 slate, with Wang Hedi returning as the lead. The first season adapted a web novel about a man who wakes up in a fantasy empire and joins the Night Watch, a supernatural police force. It mixed investigation, martial arts and a lot of modern humour.

Why the first season worked

The show did not take its own mythology too seriously. Its hero treated imperial politics like a workplace problem, which made the fantasy setting feel fresh. The cases were small enough to follow and the supporting cast had clear comic roles. That balance is hard to maintain, and the sequel's biggest risk is overcorrecting into a serious war plot.

What the source material suggests

The novel's later arcs widen the conflict from local hauntings to court factions and larger supernatural threats. A second season will likely introduce more of the Night Watch's internal hierarchy and the empire's enemies. Readers of the book will be watching for a specific set of characters; viewers who only know the show should expect the world to get bigger.

How to prepare

Watch Season 1 first. It is a light, fast series and does not require prior knowledge of Chinese fantasy. If you enjoy the comedy, our Love Between Fairy and Devil guide covers a more romantic take on the same genre, while Sword Snow Stride Season 2 is the more serious wuxia sequel on the same slate.

Release status

No date. Tencent sometimes announces a season a year ahead of production, so a late-2027 launch is plausible but not confirmed. We will update this page when the platform publishes a trailer.

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains

Tencent is adapting a prize-winning novel with the writer behind some of its biggest hits. This is the prestige play of the 2027 slate.

What is confirmed

Tencent Video is adapting A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, a novel that won one of China's most prestigious literary awards, as a 2027 drama. Zhang Ruoyun stars and Wang Juan, a writer associated with several major Chinese genre hits, is handling the script. That combination signals a prestige production rather than a quick commercial adaptation.

Why the title matters

The name refers to a famous Song dynasty landscape painting, a handscroll that depicts an idealised empire of rivers, mountains and ordinary life. A novel using that title is likely to be about the gap between the painted ideal and the actual country. That makes it a natural fit for a large historical production with literary ambitions.

What to expect

Chinese literary adaptations at this scale tend to be slow, character-driven and visually careful. They also tend to cast actors who can carry long dialogue scenes rather than pure action stars. Zhang Ruoyun is known for playing clever, verbal characters, which suggests the drama will lean on negotiation and investigation rather than battles.

How it fits the slate

Tencent's 2027 line-up mixes sequels like Joy of Life Season 3 with literary projects like this one and Wencheng. The strategy is to cover both the audience that wants familiar characters and the audience that wants prestige. Whether both can succeed in the same year is an open question.

Current status

Announced, not dated. Production schedules for literary dramas are long, and the platform has not confirmed an episode count. We will update this page when a first trailer appears.

Jian Lai

A cultivation epic with a young lead and a very large source novel. This is the genre's biggest 2027 swing.

What is confirmed

Jian Lai is a xianxia adaptation on Tencent Video's 2027 slate, with Wu Lei attached. The source is a long cultivation novel about a boy from a small town who grows up among sword cultivators, scholars and wandering immortals. The platform has not published an episode count or a launch date.

Why this is a big production

Cultivation novels are difficult to adapt because their pleasure is incremental: the hero learns a technique, meets a teacher, loses a fight, and tries again over hundreds of chapters. A television season has to compress that into a manageable arc without losing the sense of a world that exists beyond the protagonist. Tencent has the budget, but the writing is the hard part.

What new viewers should know

Xianxia is not the same as wuxia. Wuxia is martial arts in a recognisable historical China; xianxia adds immortals, spiritual cultivation and realms of existence. If you are new to the genre, our cultural terms section explains the vocabulary, and our Love Between Fairy and Devil guide is the shortest on-ramp. Jian Lai will likely assume more patience.

The casting question

Wu Lei is a well-known young actor with a strong action and costume-drama record. The role requires him to age from a small-town boy into a figure who can hold his own in a world of immortals, which is exactly the kind of arc Chinese fantasy dramas like to build around a single performer.

Status

Announced only. A 2027 slot is possible, but large xianxia productions often slip. We will update this page when Tencent releases a teaser with a date.

Jiangmen Duhou

The rebirth-revenge formula gets a big-budget adaptation with two of the genre's most bankable leads.

What is confirmed

Tencent Video announced Jiangmen Duhou for 2027 with Wang Hedi and Meng Ziyi in the lead roles. The title is usually translated along the lines of "the poisoned daughter of a general's house", and the source is a popular rebirth novel about a woman who is betrayed, dies, and wakes up years earlier with her memories intact.

The English title is not official; Chinese streamers have not published one. Use the Chinese title when searching, because fan translations vary.

The rebirth formula

Rebirth drama is one of the most reliable subgenres in Chinese web fiction. The heroine returns to the past, knows who will betray her, and uses that knowledge to protect her family and ruin her enemies. The pleasure is not suspense but competence: the audience watches a character who has already paid for her mistakes make better ones.

It is also a morally tricky formula, because the heroine often becomes as ruthless as the people who destroyed her. The best versions of the story acknowledge that cost. The weakest ones turn into a checklist of revenge scenes. Which way this adaptation goes will depend on the script.

Why the casting matters

Wang Hedi has a large overseas following from Guardians of the Dafeng and other costume dramas. Meng Ziyi is known for playing characters with a sharp edge. Pairing them suggests the production wants a romance that is also a power struggle, not a simple rescue story.

What to expect

Rebirth dramas tend to be long, with a large family cast and a lot of household politics. If you liked the inheritance wars in The Story of Minglan, this is the same machinery with more revenge and less patience. If you want a shorter historical thriller, try The Longest Day in Chang'an.

Status

Announced, not dated. We will update this page when Tencent releases a trailer or a launch window.

Zhang Juzheng

A big-budget political biography about the man who ran the Ming state and died in disgrace. This is the serious one.

What is confirmed

Tencent Video's 2027 slate includes a drama about Zhang Juzheng, the Ming dynasty official who effectively ran the government for a decade. Hu Ge plays the lead, and Chen Daoming, one of China's most respected actors, is attached as producer. The full title translates roughly as "Wind and Grain Rise: Zhang Juzheng".

Who Zhang Juzheng was

Zhang Juzheng was a senior minister during the Wanli emperor's early reign. He pushed through fiscal reforms, tried to make tax collection more predictable, and centralised decision-making around himself. He was effective and unpopular. After his death, his enemies reversed many of his policies and his family suffered. That arc, reformer to scapegoat, is why he remains a favourite subject for Chinese political drama.

Why this casting is interesting

Hu Ge is best known for playing elegant outsiders: the strategist in Nirvana in Fire, the disguised noble in other costume hits. Zhang Juzheng is a different kind of role: a man inside the system, making compromises and accumulating enemies. Chen Daoming's involvement suggests the production wants to be judged against serious historical drama rather than idol costume romance.

What to expect

Ming court politics, tax reform, a young emperor and a lot of very polite hostility. If the show follows the historical record, the central relationship is between Zhang and the emperor he effectively tutors, a bond that turns from gratitude to resentment. That is a richer story than a simple hero-versus-corruption plot, and it is the reason to watch.

Status

Announced for 2027, no date. Historical productions of this scale often take longer than the slate suggests. We will update when a trailer appears.

Wencheng

One of contemporary China's most respected novelists gets a prestige adaptation. Expect slow, sad and carefully made.

What is confirmed

Tencent Video is adapting Wencheng, a novel by Yu Hua, for its 2027 slate. Yu Hua is one of the most widely translated living Chinese novelists, known for To Live and Brothers. The novel Wencheng follows a man who arrives in a small town looking for his wife and a place called Wencheng that may not exist.

No cast or episode count has been announced. The attachment of a major literary property is the story so far.

Why the novel is a big deal

Yu Hua writes about ordinary people caught in historical change, usually with a dry humour that makes the sadness harder to shake. His work is not sentimental, and it does not offer easy moral lessons. That makes it attractive to prestige television but difficult to adapt, because the pleasure is in the narrator's voice rather than in plot twists.

What a good adaptation would need

The novel's central search is both literal and philosophical: a man is looking for a person, but also for a version of home that may have never existed. A television version would need to preserve that ambiguity instead of resolving it into a family reunion. The best Chinese literary adaptations, such as those made from Mao Dun Prize winners, tend to be slow and visually restrained.

How it fits Tencent's slate

Alongside A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, this is part of Tencent's attempt to court viewers who want serious drama rather than idol romance. The two projects will likely be judged together as a test of whether literary prestige can draw a mass audience.

Status

Announced only. We will update this page when casting is confirmed.

War and People

A war epic that is reportedly more interested in the people left behind than the battles. Bai Jingting stars.

What is confirmed

War and People is a Tencent Video 2027 project adapted from a Mao Dun Prize-winning novel, with Bai Jingting in a leading role. The title signals a broad historical canvas: war as an event that reorganises ordinary families rather than a sequence of battles.

Why the source matters

The Mao Dun Literature Prize is one of China's most prestigious fiction awards, and adaptations of its winners tend to be treated as national-scale productions. They usually receive experienced directors, large budgets and a slower release strategy. That makes this one of the more serious titles on the 2027 slate, even though it has received less social-media attention than the sequels.

What to expect

Chinese war dramas of this type tend to focus on a family or a small community across several years, using their private choices to show the pressure of public events. The emotional register is usually restrained rather than triumphalist. If the adaptation follows the novel, expect long stretches of civilian life, food shortages, letters and the slow erosion of normal routines.

Bai Jingting's range

Bai Jingting is known for contemporary roles and lighter costume dramas. A literary war epic is a deliberate change of register. Whether he can carry the quieter, older version of the character will be the main performance question.

How it compares

Tencent's 2027 slate has two literary adaptations: this and Wencheng. A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains is the third prestige title. All three are aiming at viewers who want historical drama with a literary pedigree rather than a fantasy hook.

Status

Announced, not dated. We will update this page when a trailer or cast list is published.

Peacocks Fly Southeast

iQIYI's prestige costume drama reunites the director of The Bad Kids with two of China's best film actors.

What is confirmed

iQIYI's 2026-2027 content presentation included Peacocks Fly Southeast, a costume drama scheduled for the first quarter of 2027. Tang Wei and Qin Hao star, and Xin Shuang directs. The project is described as a new interpretation of a classic Chinese story rather than a straightforward adaptation.

The original story

The title comes from a famous Han dynasty narrative poem about a young couple whose marriage is destroyed by the husband's mother. The wife is sent back to her family, both lovers are pressured into new matches, and the poem ends in mutual suicide and a pair of peacocks flying away together. It is one of the foundational tragedies of Chinese literature, and it has been adapted for opera, film and television many times.

Why the team is notable

Xin Shuang directed The Bad Kids, a crime drama praised for its visual control and its unsentimental view of family. Tang Wei and Qin Hao are film actors with international reputations. Putting that team on a classic costume tragedy suggests iQIYI wants a literary event rather than a romance serial.

What to expect

A 2027 Q1 slot implies the production is far enough along to be scheduled, but iQIYI has not published an episode count or a trailer. The source material is short, so the adaptation will have to expand the world around the couple: family politics, local customs and the economic pressures that made the marriage impossible.

Why it matters for overseas viewers

This is one of the few 2027 titles with a director and cast already known to international festival audiences. If you liked the moody realism of The Long Night, this is the same production culture applied to a historical story.

Floating Life

iQIYI's most intriguing fantasy premise: one tea shop, four historical eras, and a lot of heartbroken spirits.

What is confirmed

Floating Life appears on iQIYI's 2027 slate as a costume fantasy romance starring Chen Zheyuan and Wang Churan. The platform's synopsis describes a tea shop whose owner serves customers across several historical periods, including the Republican era, the Northern Song, the Tang dynasty and the Warring States period. Each cup of tea reveals a story of love, loss and regret.

Why the premise is unusual

Most Chinese fantasy romances follow one couple through one world. This one is structured as an anthology tied together by a single location and a single supernatural device. That gives the production freedom to change costumes, eras and tone between arcs, and it gives the leads a chance to play different versions of themselves.

The risk

Anthology structures can feel like a series of disconnected short films. The show will need a strong through-line, probably the tea shop owner's own unresolved story, to make the separate eras matter. If the frame story is weak, the romance will have no accumulated weight.

The cast

Chen Zheyuan and Wang Churan are both established in costume romance, and pairing them suggests iQIYI is aiming at the same audience that made Ashes of Love and Eternal Love successful. The difference here is the anthology format, which asks the audience to invest in several shorter relationships rather than one long one.

Status

Announced for 2027, no date. iQIYI has not published an episode count or a trailer. We will update this page when it does.