By Juli Scarr
Twitch viewers watched more than 8.6 billion hours of gaming content between January 1 and September 1, 2026, according to the company’s new State of Gaming report. Twitch says its five most-watched games accounted for nearly 1.7 billion hours during that eight-month period.
League of Legends, Counter-Strike, GTA V, VALORANT, and World of Warcraft made up that top five. The report also points to growth beyond those games, with hours watched on channels tagged for indie-game content up 51% compared with the same period last year and streams using the DropsEnabled tag generating 1.6 billion hours watched.
Twitch Names Its Five Most-Watched Games
Twitch’s five most-watched games for 2026 so far are League of Legends, Counter-Strike, GTA V, VALORANT, and World of Warcraft. Combined, those five games generated nearly 1.7 billion hours watched globally between January 1 and September 1.
The regional breakdown changes depending on where you look. League of Legends ranked first in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan and Hong Kong, plus Australia and New Zealand. GTA V ranked first in Japan, while World of Warcraft led Twitch’s DACH regional list.
Indie Games and Sandbox Viewing Draw Big Audiences
Away from the five most-watched games, Twitch also saw plenty of viewing around sandbox, horror, and indie games. Sandbox games generated 831 million hours watched, with Minecraft and Tomodachi Life among the examples Twitch highlighted.
Horror games accounted for 287 million hours watched, while the Horror tag reached 93 million hours and increased 6% compared with the same period in 2025. Games featuring creatures and companions, including Pokopia, Slime Rancher, and Temtem, reached 142 million hours watched.
Hours watched for channels tagged for indie-game content rose 51% year over year. Separately, Twitch says indie games including Meccha Chameleon, Slay the Spire 2, Big Walk, and others generated more than 348 million hours watched.
Twitch Drops Generate 1.6 Billion Hours Watched
Twitch Drops also accounted for a sizeable amount of gaming watch time. Streams using the DropsEnabled tag generated 1.6 billion hours watched, up 46% compared with January 1 through September 1, 2025.
Twitch hosted more than 7,500 Drops campaigns, a 20% increase, while participation across channels rose 40%. The number of users who participated and claimed Drops increased 15% to 40 million.
That puts a sizeable amount of Twitch gaming viewing around streams where watching can also unlock rewards. It’s a different metric from the overall 8.6 billion hours watched, but it gives some context for how Twitch is connecting game communities, streams, and Drops campaigns.
The report only covers January 1 through September 1, with Twitch noting that hours-watched figures are rounded and global unless otherwise stated. Even with four months of the year still outside that measurement window, the numbers give us a pretty clear snapshot of what people have been watching on Twitch in 2026 so far.
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