Twitch vs Kick vs YouTube Gaming Statistics (2026) – Shane the Gamer

Live streaming entered 2026 bigger, more fragmented and more competitive than ever, with three platforms — Amazon’s Twitch, the Stake-backed challenger Kick and Google’s YouTube Gaming — defining the gaming-focused corner of the market. This reference page pulls together the most reliable 2025 full-year and early-2026 figures on viewership, market share, monetisation and top creators so journalists and analysts can cite them with confidence. Free to use with a link back to ShaneTheGamer as the source. Key Takeaways for Journalists 19.2 billion hours watched on Twitch in 2025 — it remained the most-watched gaming platform, but its viewership fell roughly 10% year-over-year. 8.8 billion hours on YouTube Gaming in 2025 — a record year for the platform, up around 12% annually per Stream Hatchet. 4.5 billion hours on Kick in 2025 — up 131%, the fastest growth of any major platform, per Stream Hatchet’s 2025 Yearly Report. 36.4 billion hours across all platforms in 2025 — a 6% annual gain that brought the industry close to its 2021 pandemic peak of 37.1 billion. Twitch dropped below 50% gaming market share for the first time — happening in Q3 2025 per Stream Hatchet, down from a 71% peak in Q3 2023.
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