YouTube Goes Down on Second Day of Lunar New Year

Jakarta, VIVA — Google’s video-sharing platform YouTube was reported to have experienced a mass technical outage on Wednesday morning, 18 February 2026.

The incident occurred on the second day of Lunar New Year, when demand for online entertainment was at its peak, drawing considerable attention on social media.

Many users initially mistook the issue for a fault with their own devices or internet connections before realising it was a widespread disruption.

YouTube’s homepage suddenly went blank, displaying no videos whatsoever. Data from the application outage tracking site Downdetector showed hundreds of thousands of reports from users worldwide regarding the disruption within a short period.

The reports primarily centred on errors preventing content from being displayed on the homepage, whilst other functions continued to operate partially. The Downdetector outage tracking website registered hundreds of thousands of reports from users around the globe concerning the issue.

At the time of reporting, Google — YouTube’s parent company — had not issued any official statement regarding the cause or when the problem would be resolved. The lack of information has left the user community continuing to monitor the situation and awaiting a response from the service provider.

Previously, in mid-October 2025, the YouTube platform also experienced a global outage. At approximately 7.00am at the time, Google’s video-sharing application — the world’s largest — became inaccessible, displaying a connection lost message. The problem was widespread, affecting all user accounts and regions.