The licensing industry has run on yesterday’s data for decades. That changes now.

For too long, shelf space has been allocated based on what sold last season. Licensing deals have been signed on the strength of a pitch deck. Range decisions have been made by buyers using their own kids as a barometer for what is popular. The result is a market still grappling with the same core questions: is there genuine purchase intent beyond awareness, will the product sell through, and how long will this IP hold? Too often, these are answered with gut instinct rather than evidence. Some bets pay off. Those that do not are costly.

The Insights Family Engagement Index is built on what kids are actively feeling, seeking out and identifying with right now. It is the licensing industry's first continuous ranking of franchise strength built on real-time engagement with kids aged 3-18: how deeply fans connect, how widely an IP reaches, and how fiercely it holds its most loyal audience.

The first global Q1 2026 release shows where momentum is building ahead of the market and where licensing decisions made today are likely to outperform. For an industry that has traditionally relied on lagging indicators, this kind of forward-looking visibility offers something far more valuable: the ability to act early, mitigate risk, and back the right IP to gain a competitive edge.

Gaming IP with real tailwinds

Resident Evil sits at rank 87. Ninety days ago, it sat at rank 244. That 157-place climb demonstrates active, measurable engagement with the franchise across behavioural, emotional and cognitive dimensions: purchasing, seeking out content, expressing identity through the IP. While not necessarily intended for younger audiences, its presence here reflects how gaming IP now travels culturally, well beyond its intended age rating. The shift is driven by a clear set of moments. Resident Evil Requiem launched on 27 February 2026, selling five million copies in five days, Capcom's fastest-ever opening. Within weeks, the new protagonist had debuted as a Fortnite skin, a Porsche collaboration was live, and Hamilton watches tied to the game's lead characters were in market. The franchise landed simultaneously across every surface that kids who care about gaming occupy. The Index measured what that activation looks like in real time.

Genshin Impact, at rank 70, has climbed 154 places versus the previous quarter. HoYoverse has maintained a cadence of six-weekly content drops through Q1 2026: new characters, map expansions, and a long-awaited return to the game's original Mondstadt region in April. That produces something rarer than a launch spike: durable, compounding engagement that builds quarter after quarter.

Across the full index, IP originating in video games generates emotional engagement scores that sit, on average, ten points above every other origin category.

Miraculous Ladybug: ten years in and climbing

Miraculous Ladybug sits at rank 55 and has gained 68 places this quarter. In a top 100 dominated by properties with decades of heritage, that kind of momentum is significant, but the context makes it even more so.

Miraculous is one of the few genuinely large IP to have originated in Europe, debuting in late 2015 and now just past its tenth anniversary. It is not yet a generational franchise, but everything about how it is being built suggests that is exactly the ambition. Season 6, the first produced in Unreal Engine, rolled out across 150 countries throughout 2025. Creator Jeremy Zag has confirmed the franchise will run for at least ten seasons. A Miraculous Family Entertainment Centre is opening at the Mall of Qatar in spring 2026. A worldwide live stage show premieres in 2027 in collaboration with live entertainment company Monlove. Season 7 is in production.

The strategy is deliberately meeting kids where they are, from streaming to live experiences to location-based entertainment, building the kind of multiplatform presence that turns a hit show into a lasting franchise. The Index is picking up the impact of that in real time through kids' emotional, cognitive and behavioural signals.

Manga and anime: structural momentum

Dragon Ball has gained 61 places to reach rank 92. One Piece has gained 59 places to reach rank 85 in the past ninety days. At the Dragon Ball Genkidamatsuri event in January 2026, held in Tokyo to mark the franchise's 40th anniversary, Toei announced Dragon Ball Super: The Galactic Patrol, a new anime adapting the Moro Arc, alongside a remastered Beerus project. One Piece simultaneously restructured its entire production model, moving to 26 quality episodes per year produced in direct collaboration with Eiichiro Oda, with the Elbaph Arc beginning in April 2026. Toei's ten-year plan commits the studio to expanding both franchises internationally at scale.

For those tracking real engagement with kids, none of this is a surprise. The Insights Family's data has been charting the eastward pull in kids’ culture long before it became a fixture in licensing conversations. Content from Japan, South Korea, China and India resonates because it remains culturally authentic rather than diluted for mass appeal. Japanese anime and manga exemplify this. Their commitment to craft, serialised storytelling and emotional nuance is exactly what kids discover, share and become deeply engaged with, and we see that reflected in our dataset well before it surfaces elsewhere.

Why real-time kids' engagement data is the licensing industry's missing piece

The properties rising in this quarter's TIF Engagement Index are driven by genuine audience engagement, the kind that builds momentum long before it translates into sales. Understanding what drives that movement is what the Index is built for.

Engagement sits at its core: not just whether kids know an IP, but whether they feel something about it and act on that feeling. Building on that is reach: how widely it spreads across the kids' population. Next is category diversity: how many different places and formats it shows up in their lives. And alongside all of this is peak fans: how strongly the most devoted fans connect with it.

The Engagement Index covers kids aged 3 to 18 across 22 markets, with the ability to segment by age, market, gender, interest category and more. For a licensee building a territory-specific range, a licensor needing evidence to support an IP pitch, or any brand requiring independent, market-comparable data for licensing decisions, it is the new currency for those conversations.

Full rankings and insights are available now. To get access,contact us hereor emailhello@theinsightsfamily.com.

This article first appeared inLicensing Source Book: Summer 2026:issuu.com/maxpublishing/docs/lsb_vegas_summer_2026.