Gay, Lesbian and BL Short Dramas: Where the Apps Keep Them, and How Fast ReelShort Is Adding Them
Five short drama apps list LGBTQ series in their own categories: ReelShort 84, FlickReels 41, MoboReels 38, GoodShort 24, My Drama 18. ReelShort listed 64 of its 84 since July 2026.
Gay, lesbian and BL short dramas exist in quantity, but you will not find most of them by searching YouTube or browsing an app’s front page. Five apps file them under a category of their own, and one of them, ReelShort, has been adding them faster than anything else this year.
We read each app’s own website on 15 October 2026 and counted what it lists. We also counted every upload title on ten official YouTube channels.
Where the apps keep them
| App | What its website calls the category | Series listed |
|---|---|---|
| ReelShort | LGBTQ (a tag) | 84 |
| FlickReels | LGBT+ | 41 |
| MoboReels | BL | 38 |
| GoodShort | LGBTQIA+ | 24 |
| My Drama | LGBTQ+ | 18 |
Four other apps we checked show no such category in their website menus: DramaBox, whose browse page lists 55 categories without one, ShortMax, NetShort and FlexTV. That does not mean they carry no LGBTQ stories, only that they do not file them anywhere you can find from the site.
BL stands for “boys’ love”, a label borrowed from Japanese and Chinese romance fiction for stories about two men. You will also see GL (“girls’ love”) and WLW (“women loving women”) used for stories about two women.
ReelShort is adding them fast
ReelShort’s LGBTQ tag holds 84 series. Each ReelShort listing carries a date in its address, so we can see when each one was added:
| When the listing was created | LGBTQ series |
|---|---|
| July 2024 to June 2026 | 20 |
| July 2026 | 13 |
| August 2026 | 16 |
| September 2026 | 29 |
| 1 to 15 October 2026 | 6 |
64 of the 84 arrived from July 2026 onward. For two years ReelShort added roughly one a month; in September 2026 it added 29. The date is when the listing was created, which is usually but not always the premiere, so treat the month as approximate. The direction is not in doubt.
The ones on ReelShort’s front page that day also carried tags such as “Gay”, “Werewolf” or “Adults Only”.
What they are about
The stories follow the same templates as the rest of the category, just with two leads of the same gender: rivals, bodyguards, contract marriages, secret identities.
One pattern stands out. MoboReels’ BL list leans heavily on fantasy. 14 of the first 30 titles on it involve wolf kings, vampires, elven princes or fated mates, the werewolf-romance machinery that runs through so much of this format, now with two male leads. If that is your taste, see how the werewolf trope works across the apps.
Rare on YouTube, but well watched
The apps barely advertise these series on YouTube. Across 20,332 uploads on ten official channels, only 33 name the story as gay, lesbian, BL or LGBTQ in the title, about one in 600.
Those few uploads do well. 24 of the 33 drew more views than the typical upload on their own channel. The clearest case is DramaBox: in early 2025 it posted five uploads from BL series, and their median of 208,277 views is about ten times the channel’s usual 19,972. The most watched of them passed 2.3 million.
| Channel | Uploads naming an LGBTQ story | Their median views | Channel’s median views |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoodShort Moments | 14 | 74,585 | 24,156 |
| My Drama | 11 | 48,765 | 23,186 |
| DramaBox | 5 | 208,277 | 19,972 |
| GoodShort Episodes | 2 | 9,797 and 601,955 | 3,134 |
| ReelShort | 1 | 21,034 | 32,674 |
The numbers are small, so do not read too much into any single row. Together they say the audience is there, which fits what ReelShort is now doing.
Apps made for it
A few apps specialise. BL Dramas, launched in February 2026, had 393 US App Store ratings when we checked, and GagaOOLala, a long-running LGBTQ streaming service with conventional-length shows, had 1,827. Both are small next to the general apps above, whose ratings run to hundreds of thousands.
How to find them
- Use the app’s own category. On ReelShort it is a tag called LGBTQ; on FlickReels “LGBT+”; on MoboReels “BL”; on GoodShort “LGBTQIA+”; on My Drama “LGBTQ+”.
- Do not rely on YouTube titles. The apps rarely label these uploads, so a search there misses most of them.
- Expect most to be new. On ReelShort, three in four arrived in the last few months.
What this does and does not show
It shows where five apps file LGBTQ series and how many each lists, and how ReelShort’s count has grown.
It does not show how many LGBTQ series exist in total. Each count is what an app’s website listed on one day, using the app’s own label, and a label can include stories where the LGBTQ romance is not the main plot. Apps without a category may still carry such stories. Nothing on this page describes what anything costs.
What we measured
The category pages of ReelShort, FlickReels, MoboReels, GoodShort and My Drama, and the category menus of DramaBox, ShortMax, NetShort and FlexTV, read in a web browser on 15 October 2026; every page of each list was opened and series were counted once. ReelShort listing dates come from the date encoded in each series address. Upload titles and view counts cover every public upload on ten verified official YouTube channels, 20,332 videos, read between 7 and 15 October 2026; uploads that only mention a gay side character, or use the word as a plot twist, are excluded.