Stream Hatchet

‼️ The Q1 2026 Live-Streaming Trends Report Is Here ‼️ And big news: We're officially including TikTok Live data every quarter from now on 🎶 Super crucial, since if you include it, then TikTok Live accounted for almost half of all live-streaming viewership in Q1 2026! (with total hours watched hitting 17B) But we go deeper too: 📺 Platform picture: TikTok Live's near-50% viewership share stands out, but TikTok Live actually dipped from Q4 2025 while other platforms rose to meet it. 🎮 Gaming shifts: New releases Resident Evil Requiem and Crimson Desert were the stand-out success of Q1, while World of Warcraft surged to the #8 game on live streaming thanks to its Midnight expansion. 🥜 Creator spotlight: ARC Raiders "PTuber" TheBurntPeanut rode the game's popularity to success, combining engaging content with a 24/7 channel strategy to become (by far!) the most watched creator this quarter. We have in-depth insights on all these shifts, plus events, esports, and non-gaming content... And best of all, it's totally free! Click here to download right away and become the most knowledge streaming brain in your office 🧠⬇️ buff.ly/C6IaaGU

Furthermore, key competitors like YouTube Gaming and Kick also saw concurrent growth in the same quarter; YouTube Gaming reached 2.5 billion hours (+2% QoQ) and Kick achieved 1.3 billion hours (+5% QoQ). As audiences consolidated their viewing around these major players, smaller platforms collectively shrank by 8% QoQ to 860 million hours watched. For this and a lot more data on Live-Streaming trends, check out our Q1 2026 report here ➡️ buff.ly/d4CzLza

TikTok Live continues to hold a dominant position, leading all live-streaming platforms with 8.1 billion hours watched and securing 47.6% of the market share in Q1 2026. However, its significant QoQ decline of 18% suggests that the platform's rapid growth has perhaps cooled off somewhat. In contrast, Twitch successfully rebounded from previous consecutive QoQ losses, achieving 4.5 billion hours watched and capturing 26.8% of the total market, representing a positive growth of +4% QoQ.

📈 Top 5 Live-Streaming Platforms Market Share 📊 The first quarter of 2026 presented a dynamic and competitive landscape for the live-streaming industry, characterized by market consolidation and shifting growth trajectories among the major platforms. The following analysis details the performance of the top live-streaming platforms by hours watched and their Quarter-over-Quarter (QoQ) growth.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream exemplifies the rising popularity of "cozy games" in live streaming, a trend that gained momentum earlier this year with Pokemon Pokopia. For a deeper look into the types of cozy games attracting viewers, read our full analysis here➡️ buff.ly/bkE2ZR5

The top 5 streamers that lead the game to this position are all from Japan. Listed by their hours watched @houshoumarine holds the top spot with 880K Hours Watched, followed by @yuika_siina in second with 818K. In third place is @Fuwa_Minato with 627K, while @sakuramiko35 takes fourth with 615K. @unkochan1234567 completes the top 5 ranking with 608K Hours Watched

🏝️ Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream achieves a spectacular launch ⛲️ Since its release over a month ago, @Nintendo's social simulation hit, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, has captivated the hearts of players, streamers, and audiences alike. The game has reached significant milestones during its debut month, accumulating 32.4 million Hours Watched. This performance secures its spot as the third most-watched release of 2026 to date, trailing only Resident Evil Requiem (76.1M Hours Watched) and Crimson Desert (41.8M Hours Watched). Furthermore, it achieved a peak of 169K concurrent viewers and maintained an average viewership of 45K.

@theburntpeanut @playrust @FcpnchStds If you want to check the analysis of TheBurntPeanut and a lot more of insights from Live-Streaming in First Quarter of 2026, here's a link to our Q1 2026 Report ➡️buff.ly/yCEjBd8

From April 16 to April 27, he ran a Twitch Drops campaign for @playrust, and his impact to the @FcpnchStds' game viewership was largely notable making up 35% of Rust’s audience. It also had an impact on his own metrics. In less than two months, he acumulated 16.7M hours watched in Rust, more than half of the 29.4M hours he’s earned year-to-date streaming Arc Raiders.

🥜 TheBurntPeanut’s impact on streaming continues to grow 🔥 There’s no denying that @TheBurntPeanut has become one of the biggest breakout stars in gaming live streaming. He experienced the highest growth of any streamer in Q1 2026, with a 134% increase in hours watched compared to the previous quarter.

Fans are applauding that such a major upgrade was free, with many noting that other studios would likely have charged for similar content. Updates can revamp the player base of a game, and we did an analysis on how content drops and expansions affects the viewership of live service games. Check it here ➡️ buff.ly/XZIzG8S

In April the game acumulated 93.6k of Hours Watched across all gaming streaming platforms and in just 11 days of May hat shot to 1.41M and Peak Viewers climbed from 525 to 33.6K. The Top Five contributing streamers to this peak are: @jahreinG with 11.1K, followed by @CohhCarnage with 10.1k, leaving @Knekro in third place with 6.4k, with the forth spot for WELOVEGAMES with 5.3k peak viewers and leaving @G4G_Revenant last in this top 5 with 4.6k.

⚔️ Conan Exiles’ viewership has surged since the switch to Unreal Engine 5 🏋️ To mark its 8th anniversary, @Funcom's Survival Game @ConanExiles rolled out a free update that not only pushed player counts but also reignited streamers and viewers interest experiencing an increment of more than 3,800% hours watched since the previous week.

@Pokemon @Nintendo @unkochan1234567 @batora324 This is just one more chapter in Pokémon's community building efforts on live-streaming. To read lots more about their previous titles, we've got you covered here ➡️ buff.ly/0Iiu1ZZ

The top 5 channels shows where Pokémon Champions landed across regions. Japan dominated: @unkochan1234567, the #1 Japanese streamer on Twitch, generated 2.3M hours watched on his own, way out in front and nearly triple second-place @batora324's 846K 🇯🇵 The remaining three show the game's global impact too: US streamer @Iateyourp1e (449K) 🇺🇸, Korean Chzzk streamer 윤가놈 (415K) (as the only non-Twitch creator to crack the list) 🇰🇷, and Spanish streamer @KNekro (303K), a former World Championships finalist who competed at the very first Worlds back in 2000 🇪🇸

⚡ Pokémon Champions Enters The Master Ball Tier Of Live Streaming 🏆 It's been a month since The @Pokemon Company and @Nintendo launched Pokémon Champions: The competitive battler which is now the official Pokémon VGC platform, set to be used at the Pokémon World Championships later this year.

@AJEnglish @lofigirl @EliasN97 @realmadrid @ToniKroos @IbaiLlanos @gerardromero You may notice we didn't mention Just Chatting content here... Well, it's a little complicated 🗣️🙊 We explain the distinction between Just Chatting and non-gaming content in more depth in our full non-gaming article ➡️ buff.ly/Fs1lpTQ

The top non-gaming creators on Twitch and Kick make that point about Sports content painfully obvious. Football dominates the upper end: @EliasN97 (2.4M hours) co-founded the Icon League with @realmadrid legend @ToniKroos, while @IbaiLlanos (1.9M) and @gerardromero (1.4M) built audiences around football talk and sports journalism ⚽🏈🥎 The rest of the top 10 channels by non-gaming hours watched show more variety: @HotBeatsTV (1.3M hours) streams live electronic music, @Vedal987 (906K hours) built a fanbase around @NeurosamaAI, and @BobRossOfficial (858K hours) streams archived episodes of The Joy of Painting.

⚽🎨🎵 Non-Gaming Grabs Over 60% of Live-Streaming Viewership Sports, Music, Art, and Lifestyle content have quietly taken over the platforms that built their identities on gaming: Non-gaming content claimed 3-in-5 live-streaming hours watched in Q1 2026, nearly doubling gaming's 32% share.