'Stranger Things' 5 opens with 59.6 million views in Netflix’s biggest English-language TV debut

Stranger Things Season 5 has opened with a record-setting performance on Netflix, drawing 59.6 million views in its first five days.

This marks the strongest premiere week ever for an English-language Netflix series and the third-highest overall, surpassed only by Seasons 2 and 3 of Squid Game.

The new milestone represents a significant rise from the Season 4 launch in 2022. At that time, Netflix measured viewership by hours watched, with Season 4 accumulating 287 million hours, equating to roughly 22 million views.

Based on Netflix’s current metric, Season 5’s debut reflects an increase of about 171%, though it benefited from a longer five-day tally compared with Season 4’s three-day count.

Season 5 has already set another record before its run has fully unfolded. As anticipation grew ahead of its premiere, all four previous seasons of Stranger Things entered the Netflix Top 10, marking the first time a series held four positions on the chart. For the week of 24–30 November, five seasons appeared simultaneously: Season 5 led at No. 1, followed by Season 1 at No. 3 with 8.9 million views, Season 4 at No. 5 with 6.1 million views, Season 2 at No. 6 with 5.6 million views and Season 3 at No. 8 with 4.6 million views.

Netflix released only the first four episodes of Season 5 last week, with three more arriving on Christmas Day and the finale scheduled for New Year’s Eve.

Given this staggered rollout, the series is expected to remain in the Top 10 for an extended period, with strong potential to join Netflix’s all-time most-watched English-language titles, where Season 4 currently sits at No. 3 with 140.7 million views in its first 91 days.