Spanish cinema celebrated a remarkable night with the 2018 Goya Awards, marking the 37th edition of the annual honors. The ceremony highlighted the country’s top films and achieved a notable year-over-year improvement in viewership, drawing in millions of spectators and solidifying the event as a staple in the national entertainment calendar. The gala was watched by more than seven and a half million people, while the afternoon red carpet event attracted around eleven percent share and about 1.3 million attendees. These numbers reflect a sustained interest in Spanish cinema and its cultural impact across the country.
Goya Awards audience in recent years
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2013: 22.2% share with 3,917,000 viewers
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2014: 19.8% share with 3,567,000 viewers
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2015: 24.7% share with 3,839,000 viewers
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2016: 25.8% share with 3,900,000 viewers
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2017: 23.1% share with 3,648,000 viewers
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2018: 19.9% share with 3,086,000 viewers
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2019: 26.2% share with 3,819,000 viewers
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2020: 26% share with 3,598,000 viewers
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2021: 15.6% share with 2,482,000 viewers
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2022: 22.9% share with 2,777,000 viewers
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2023: 23.4% share with 2,684,000 viewers
Still, the day’s most watched program was not the Goya ceremony. The Club World Cup match broadcast by Telecinco delivered a decisive win for the afternoon, achieving a 25.6% audience share and drawing 3,364,000 viewers. Roughly seven million people watched at least one minute of the sports event, underscoring the strong appeal of live sports in Spain even when a prestigious film awards show is on air.
Among the other nightly offerings, Telecinco carried the film Pelé, which reached 8% of the audience with 1,015,000 viewers. Antena 3 followed with the film Wanted, securing 6.6% and 871,000 viewers. On Four, the program Ambush held a 6% share with 825,000 viewers. La Sexta Xplica settled at 4% with 448,000 viewers. These results illustrate the competitive landscape of late-night and early-evening programming, where several channels vie for various audience segments.
Additional highlights of the day included Socialité, which drew 13.2% at noon with 942,000 viewers, and Fiesta in the afternoon, which maintained around a 10.9% share with 1,143,000 viewers. The day’s programming mix demonstrates how audiences allocated their attention between cinema excellence and live sports, with sports broadcasting often pulling larger daytime audiences while film awards ensemble programming captures steady interest in the evening hours.