Twitch published its State of Gaming 2026 report on September 9, 2026. The headline: viewers watched more than 8.6 billion hours of gaming content on Twitch between January 1 and September 1, 2026, and the five most watched games generated nearly 1.7 billion of them. The source is Twitch’s own post.
Twitch’s numbers describe the whole platform. Ours describe something narrower: what happens when a game pays streamers to play it. We’ve run sponsored streams on Twitch since 2016, so we read the report next to our own campaign data. Our take comes first, the full report after it.
Our take: five things to plan for in 2027
1. Rewards are now standard, and so is the work after the campaign. Drops enabled streams grew 46% to 1.6 billion hours, almost a fifth of all gaming hours in the period. Our data shows why rewards matter: in 2026 campaigns we followed for 30 days after the paid streams ended, 18% of sponsored streamers came back to the game without being paid. Rewards for viewers, through Drops or Community Rewards, give the other streamers a reason to return.
2. Small games can win, with small streamers. Indie hours grew 51%. In our campaigns, streamers with 25 to 99 viewers got 318% more chat messages per viewer hour and 172% more link clicks per viewer than streamers with 2,000+ viewers. And for smaller games, the streamers we sponsored made up most of the game’s Twitch audience in the month after the campaign, up to 89% of all viewer minutes on it.
3. Hype lifts the stream, and the game decides how much. Twitch’s top five is full of long running games. For a new game, the question is whether a streamer’s audience follows them into it. In our data, sponsored streams for games outside mobile drew a median 12% more viewers than we expected at booking, and the best launches drew up to 41% more. Mobile games came in 13% below on Twitch.
4. Go local, down to the chat. The top three games differ by market: GTA V leads in Japan, World of Warcraft in DACH and QSMP makes the top three in Mexico. Engagement differs too. Compared within the same streamer size, Italian streams in our campaigns had 92% more chat messages per viewer hour than English ones and Polish streams 56% more, while German streams had 49% fewer. Build creator lists and targets per market, not one global list.
5. Hours come from a few, but you can’t pick them. Twitch’s top games and streamers take a big share of all hours. Campaigns look the same: in our campaigns, the top 10% of streamers delivered a median 37% of a campaign’s viewer minutes. Nobody can tell in advance which streams those will be, so spread the budget. Our creator data for 2027 shows the same pattern from the creator side: whether a creator streams your game a third time decides whether the hours last.
Source for our numbers: Wehype campaign data, completed sponsored Twitch streams from 2024 to 2026 and Twitch viewing data for the 30 days after 2026 campaigns, pulled November 4, 2026. “Expected” is the average audience we expected for each streamer when we booked them.
The report at a glance
| Metric | Jan 1 to Sep 1, 2026 | Change vs 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Hours watched, gaming content | 8.6 billion+ | |
| Hours watched, top 5 games combined | Nearly 1.7 billion | |
| Hours watched, sandbox games | 831 million | |
| Hours watched, indie game content | 348 million+ | +51% |
| Hours watched, horror games | 287 million | |
| Hours watched, streams tagged Horror | 93 million | +6% |
| Hours watched, creature and companion games | 142 million | |
| Hours watched, streams tagged DropsEnabled | 1.6 billion | +46% |
| Drops campaigns | 7,500+ | +20% |
| Users who claimed Drops | 40 million | +15% |
| Channel participation in Drops | +40% |
The five most watched games and their top streamers
| Game | Top streamers on Twitch |
|---|---|
| League of Legends | Caedrel, otplol_, Noway4u_sir |
| Counter-Strike | StRoGo, ESLCS, ohnepixel |
| GTA V | JLtomy, fps_shaka, PENTA |
| VALORANT | GOFNS, Mixwell, Lazvell |
| World of Warcraft | Echo_esports, Maximum, Metashi12 |
Two of the five are games where tournament channels such as ESLCS and Echo_esports rank next to individual creators. GTA V is driven by roleplay, and Twitch says the GTA VI community turned out in such numbers that it “broke the site”. When you map a genre’s creators, include esports and roleplay channels.
Genres: indie grew fastest
| Genre | Hours watched | Games Twitch named |
|---|---|---|
| Sandbox | 831 million | Minecraft, Tomodachi Life |
| Indie | 348 million+ | Meccha Chameleon, Slay the Spire 2, Big Walk |
| Horror | 287 million | Dead by Daylight, Phasmophobia, Silent Hill f |
| Creatures and companions | 142 million | Pokopia, Slime Rancher, Temtem |
Indie is the one genre with a big growth number: hours watched on channels tagged for indie game content rose 51% year over year. Streams tagged Horror grew 6% to 93 million hours.
Top 3 games by region
| Region | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | League of Legends | Fortnite | GTA V |
| United Kingdom | League of Legends | Fortnite | Minecraft |
| Spain | League of Legends | VALORANT | Fortnite |
| France | League of Legends | GTA V | VALORANT |
| DACH | World of Warcraft | League of Legends | GTA V |
| Benelux | League of Legends | Counter-Strike | GTA V |
| Mexico | League of Legends | QSMP | Fortnite |
| Brazil | League of Legends | VALORANT | Tibia |
| Japan | GTA V | League of Legends | VALORANT |
| Taiwan and Hong Kong | League of Legends | VALORANT | Apex Legends |
| Australia and New Zealand | League of Legends | Fortnite | Overwatch |
League of Legends is number one in nine of the eleven regions. The exceptions are DACH, where World of Warcraft leads, and Japan, where GTA V does. Twitch’s infographic labels the first region “US & CA”; the post’s text says United States.
Creators Twitch highlighted
North America
- Jynxzi generated 78 million hours watched across Rocket League, Rainbow Six Siege and League of Legends.
- TheBurntPeanut passed 70 million hours watched, mainly from ARC Raiders, Rust and Escape from Tarkov.
- HappyHappyGal was one of the three most watched Fortnite streamers on Twitch worldwide.
- RealKatieB’s subscribers nearly doubled and followers grew 92%.
Rest of the world
- Spain: Rubius passed 21 million hours watched, mostly in Minecraft, TCG Card Shop Simulator and Marvel Rivals.
- France: Kamet0 reached 13 million hours watched in 2026 across League of Legends and VALORANT.
- Germany: Noway4u_Sir is the third most watched League of Legends streamer on Twitch, and BastiGHG the most watched Minecraft streamer worldwide.
- UK: Vedal987 and the AI avatar Neuro-sama broke the Hype Train record for the third time in a row, reaching level 123.
- Taiwan: Tsukilin broke the Twitch subathon record, ending at number 5 worldwide and number 1 in APAC.
- Brazil: cellbit ran an escape room livestream from an old VHS store.
- Mexico: aldo_geo hosted Geoware World, a Minecraft event in August, and Deusamir placed 7th at the Esports World Cup with team Leviathan.
- Middle East: sultan_feasts is growing with cooking streams of recipes from World of Warcraft and The Witcher.
Drops: up 46% to 1.6 billion hours
Streams using the DropsEnabled tag generated 1.6 billion hours watched, up 46%. Twitch ran more than 7,500 Drops campaigns (up 20%), channel participation rose 40% and 40 million users claimed Drops, up 15%.
Drops hours grew more than twice as fast as the number of campaigns. For publishers, rewards for watching have moved from a launch extra to a standard part of a Twitch plan.
Wehype is an official Twitch partner. Our campaigns run inside the Twitch Sponsorship Dashboard, so you can reach streamers of every size in the markets that matter to your game. Our Twitch guide covers how we plan a campaign.
About the data
Twitch figures come from Twitch’s State of Gaming 2026, published September 9, 2026. According to Twitch, the data comes from its internal sources, is global and covers January 1 through September 1, 2026. Hours watched are rounded, and growth figures compare against January 1 through September 1, 2025. Where the post’s text and its infographics differ, we follow the text. This page is Wehype’s summary and isn’t published by Twitch.
Wehype figures come from our own campaign data: every completed sponsored Twitch stream we ran from 2024 to 2026, compared with the audience we expected when we booked each streamer, plus Twitch viewing data for the 30 days after 2026 campaigns. Pulled November 4, 2026.
