Six Years Later, This 10/10 Classic Is Still Netflix's Most Watched Series in 2026

Published Jul 18, 2026, 5:03 PM EDT

That said, alongside major 2026 releases such as The Wonderfools, My Royal Nemesis, Sold Out on You, and Phantom Lawyer, there's one unexpected K-drama absolutely dominating Netflix's rankings. And the impressive part is that it's been six whole years since its release, which only goes to show that it's still the perfect adaptation after all these years.

True Beauty Is Still One Of Netflix's Most Viewed K-Dramas In 2026

Netflix recently released its 2026 What We Watched report, revealing the most-streamed shows on the platform in the first half of the year, from January to June 2026, and the report was full of quite a few surprises. The first surprise was that Teach You A Lesson was the most-streamed K-drama on Netflix and the sixth most-streamed series on the platform overall in the first half of 2026, with a whopping 48.2 million views, despite having been released just recently on June 5.

For the most part, the K-drama rankings are dominated by series released in 2026 or the previous year, and as such, one of the biggest surprises in the report was that True Beauty is still one of the most highly streamed K-dramas on Netflix even six years after its release. True Beauty placed #17 among the K-dramas with 6.6 million views and 132.2 million hours streamed, and is the only K-drama from 2020 in the top 20 K-dramas. The full ranking as per Netflix's What We Watched report is as follows:

What's more impressive is that True Beauty is only available in select regions on Netflix, specifically only 108 countries, and the series is available to stream on HBO Max in 80 countries, taking some of the streaming load away from Netflix. That said, it is still quite a feat that a K-drama from 2020 was able to achieve these streaming numbers despite not even being available globally on Netflix.

The most likely reason for this spike and True Beauty's resurgence is the release and popularity of The Wonderfools, which also stars Cha Eun-woo and ranked fifth among the K-dramas with 20 million views. The Wonderfools' success very likely led new viewers to look into Cha Eun-woo's previous roles, of which True Beauty is easily the most famous, while also luring existing fans into a rewatch.

True Beauty's K-Drama Is Still The Best Version Of The Now Classic Story

All that said, True Beauty's continued popularity even in 2026 only goes to show how much of an enduring classic the series is. Over the years, the series, which started out as a webtoon, has since expanded into a K-drama, of course, but also an anime with a second season currently on the way. But, even with all these different ways to experience the series, the K-drama arguably remains the superior version of the story, and, controversial as it may sound, the K-drama might even be better than its source material, the webtoon.

Besides nailing every single casting and featuring excellent performances from every member of its main cast, including Cha Eun-woo, True Beauty's K-drama smooths over a lot of cliches from the webtoon. For one, the K-drama presents a better version of certain characters, such as Kang Su-jin, who is more of a one-dimensional antagonistic figure in the webtoon. Sure, her actions in the K-drama also get a little crazy towards the end, but they're still much more realistic than the webtoon.

True Beauty's K-drama also avoids overly complicating its main romance. While the Team Seojun shippers were indeed left a little dry in the K-drama as a result, restricting the relationship to just Suho made more sense in the end and avoided ruining the friendship between Seojun and Suho that the two spent the nearly entire series trying to reforge. Even so, regardless of which adaptation you prefer, there's no denying that True Beauty's K-drama is still a must-watch classic even after six years, and it will likely stay that way for years to come.