Netflix is adding short videos from major publishers starting August 3, 2026. The new content will be available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

Partners include BuzzFeed, Condé Nast (which owns Vogue and Vanity Fair), Hearst Magazines, Tastemade, and several other publishers. Netflix says more will join later.

These videos are short — some just two or three minutes, others up to 20 minutes. They're the kind of content you'd normally find on YouTube or Instagram: cooking tutorials, celebrity interviews, home tours, and travel tips. The specific shows include recipes from Tasty, behind-the-scenes celebrity clips from 30 Questions, home design tours from Architectural Digest, and several others.

Why Netflix is doing this

Netflix doesn't own or produce this content. Instead, it's paying publishers for the right to stream their videos. Think of it like when Netflix licenses movies from studios — it pays for the rights but doesn't own the film itself. Here, Netflix is doing the same thing with short videos that were originally made for other platforms.

Netflix already tried a similar idea with a feature called Clips, which let viewers scroll through short clips from Netflix's own shows, similar to TikTok. This new deal takes that idea further by bringing in videos from outside publishers.

The challenge

Netflix's service was built around longer videos: TV episodes and films. The app, the search features, and the recommendation system — the technology that suggests what you should watch next — are all designed for that. Now Netflix is trying to add short videos that you watch in five or fifteen minutes instead.

This puts Netflix in direct competition with TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube for your spare time. Those apps have been refining short-video recommendations for over a decade and have massive libraries. Netflix's system was built for something different, which raises a genuine question: can Netflix's recommendations work well for short videos, or will people just go back to TikTok or YouTube instead.

Media companies have tried mixing short-form content into long-form platforms before. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn't, and the feature quietly disappears. Netflix's publishing partners get paid and get more exposure for their content either way, so they're not taking much risk.

What matters most is whether Netflix will share how this experiment performs. If short-form videos keep more people watching Netflix longer each day, or stop them from canceling after they finish a favorite show, then expect Netflix to add many more publishers. If the videos don't move the needle on those metrics, this becomes just another feature Netflix tried and eventually moved on from.