According to a new report from Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, live streaming continues to show signs of resilience across major platforms this year. The Q1 2026 Live Streaming Report takes a closer look at Q1 2026 performance across major platforms, exploring how viewership, creator activity, and platform momentum shifted at the start of the year.
Live streaming saw renewed momentum during the first quarter of 2026, with total hours watched, hours streamed, and unique channels all increasing quarter-over-quarter across tracked platforms.
Kick continued to stand out as one of the fastest-growing platforms year-over-year, while Twitch showed signs of short-term recovery despite continued year-over-year declines in viewership and creator activity.
Conversational and personality-driven content remained a major force across live streaming, with Just Chatting leading hours watched across all platforms and continuing to dominate on both Twitch and Kick.
Total hours watched across all platforms increased quarter-over-quarter, rising from 20.90
billion in Q4 2025 to 21.49 billion in Q1 2026, representing a 2.83% increase.
Year-over-year, total hours watched increased by approximately 2.87%, up from 20.89 billion in Q1 2025.
Total hours streamed across all platforms also increased in Q1 2026, rising from 318.8 million in Q4 2025 to 330.3 million, reflecting a 3.63% quarter-over-quarter increase. Compared to Q1 2025, total hours streamed increased by approximately 6.24%, suggesting creator activity remained strong heading into the new year.
Kick continued to show strong year-over-year growth in Q1 2026, with viewership, creator hours, and unique channels all increasing significantly compared to the previous year. In Q1 2026, total hours watched on Kick increased to 1.27 billion, up from 1.22 billion in Q4
2025, representing a 4.74% quarter-over-quarter increase.
Twitch saw a quarter-over-quarter rebound in Q1 2026 across viewership, hours streamed, and unique channels, though the platform remained down year-over-year. In Q1 2026, Twitch’s total hours watched increased by approximately 3.90% quarter-over-quarter, rising from 4.38 billion hours in Q4 2025 to 4.55 billion hours.
YouTube Gaming maintained relative stability in Q1 2026, with viewership up both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year, while unique channels continued to soften.
Live streaming has long been a bastion of gaming culture, and an uptick in activity at the start of this year reinforces its importance to developers and gamers alike. However, as personality-driven content leads streaming viewership, the takeaway for game studios and publishers is that they may need to adjust their streamer engagement strategies to better connect with their target audiences to compete in this arena.