Prime Video has quietly been having a very good 2026. The Amazon-owned SVOD has solidified its position as the clear leader of the non-Netflix streaming pack: With 154 billion U.S. minutes streamed for its original content year to date through the end of August, per Luminate Streaming Viewership (M), it’s ahead of its nearest competitor (Apple TV, also having a strong year) by nearly 70 billion minutes and up more than 25% from the same point last year.
What’s driving this engagement? It’s worth noting that Reacher is a consistently huge performer for Prime Video (with 11.2B minutes streamed so far this year). Moreover, the streamer’s massive reach, courtesy of its ubiquitous parent — it’s included with the Amazon Prime membership program — gives it a natural advantage over rivals.
But Prime Video has also built up a robust roster of originals, with a deep bench of high-performing shows where its competitors’ slates frequently drop off after the top 5 or 10 titles. (Hulu’s top 2026 series, for instance, currently fall below 2B minutes streamed at the No. 10 slot; Prime Video’s remain above this mark until No. 23.)
Studying these titles more closely, certain trends stand out, one being the streamer’s reliance on IP culled from the airport crime thriller market: not just Reacher, based on the Jack Reacher novels, but Cross and Scarpetta, drawn from bestselling characters by James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell, respectively.
There is also a definite trend toward young adult (YA) and romance titles, largely though not entirely lit adaptations as well. Most obvious is perhaps Prime Video’s biggest recent hit outside of Reacher, The Summer I Turned Pretty, whose 2025 conclusion powered it to the top 10 most streamed original series of that year.
Meanwhile, in terms of minutes streamed, the debut season of Off Campus — based on another hockey-centric romance book series — is currently Prime Video’s most-watched original TV season of 2026 in the U.S., eclipsing such blockbusters as the final season of The Boys and Fallout S2 (both of which have longer total runtimes than Off Campus S1).
Just outside the top 10, another YA title, Sterling Point, racked up nearly 2.4B minutes streamed with just eight 45-minute episodes, peaking at No. 2 on Luminate’s weekly original series chart and securing a quick season 2 renewal. (Expect to see this show graduate from a binge release to a weekly rollout when it returns.) Even the service’s Legally Blonde spinoff, Elle, took a YA tack, focusing on the high school days of protagonist Elle Woods.
Perhaps this is why Amazon recently reorganized its TV studio to include a new head of YA programming, an unusually high-level executive position for such a specific genre. If the tech giant is eager to ensure the hits keep on coming, focusing on maintaining a strong YA slate is as good a method as any.
