'The Deal' wins two international accolades

"The Deal" wins the top prize in the Immersive Theater category at the 2026 Immersive Experience Awards. File photos 

“The Deal,” a large‑scale immersive theater production staged aboard the Minghua cruise ship at Shekou’s Sea World, has received two major international industry recognitions. The show was shortlisted for the 2026 WXO World Experience Awards and won the top prize in the Immersive Theater category at the 2026 Immersive Experience Awards — making it the first Chinese production to win in the category.

Scenes from "The Deal."

The Immersive Experience Awards, founded in the United Kingdom, are a global professional program honoring immersive theater, live experiences, and digital art. In its inaugural edition this year, other winners from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey took honors in categories including immersive dining, escape rooms, interactive and projection‑based experiences, production and craft, and brand activations.

Designed for adult audiences, “The Deal” transports visitors into a richly imagined version of 1920s Paris, telling a universal story of love, ambition, and consequence through physical theater, dance, live music, and close‑up performance. Audiences move through interconnected streets, shops, offices, hidden rooms, and a vibrant jazz club, following performers and discovering different strands of the story as they unfold. 

The show records 62 consecutive sold‑out performances.

A live three‑piece band roams through the venue, weaving music into the action, while a 34‑strong international cast performs in multiple mother tongues. At its heart is the journey of Marcel, whose life‑changing choices gradually draw audiences into the emotional stakes of a storyabout love, ambition and consequence.

The Immersive Experience Awards website lauds the show as a combination of cinematic scale and intimate encounters, “using architecture, scenography, performance and audience movement as one integrated system.” “More than a temporary spectacle, it establishes a sustainable, long‑term model for immersive theater within a historic landmark,” the verdict reads.

A view of the Minghua at Shekou's Sea World.

The production was also shortlisted for the WXO 2026 “Large Experience of the Year” category and showcased at the London Experience Week global industry summit in April. Organized by the World Experience Organization (WXO), these are the first global awards dedicated to the experience economy and are often dubbed the “Oscars of the Experience Economy.” 

The production is shortlisted for the WXO 2026 “Large Experience of the Year” category. 

In its official commentary, the organizers noted: “The production leverages the entire vertical space of the Minghua to create a multi‑layered narrative world, transforming a historic vessel into a roaming theater that pushes the boundaries of immersive theater.”

Since its premiere on Oct. 1, 2025, the production quickly made its way onto Shenzhen’s must‑see theater lists published by ticketing platforms Damai and Maoyan. The show recorded 62 consecutive sold‑out performances and was named “Most Popular New Performance Space of the Year” at the 2025 Guangdong Performing Arts Awards, presented by the Guangdong Performance Industry Association.