TwitchCon 2026 is underway, and the kick-off had some great moments. With a recap of the year, upcoming updates to the platform, some special community moments and a tease for the con itself, the Opening Ceremonies delivered a fantastic look at things to come here in San Diego.
Following a look back at some of the people and moments from 2026, the Head of Community at Twitch, Mary Kish, teased a special surprise for Twitch Partner HMBLZAYY who, after a car accident that left him having to relearn how to walk, walked over 3000 miles from Philadelphia to California on stream to raise money to build a trade school for kids in Philly. ZAYY made his way onto the Glitch Theatre Stage, where Kish and Twitch CEO Dan Clancy informed him that Twitch would be donating $25,000 to his fundraiser.
Platform updates are always one of the big stars of Dan Clancy’s keynote, and this year, they had some good ones. The recently released Stream Recaps, which let you essentially create a highlight reel of clips and other moments from your stream for discoverability, will let designated community members create clips alongside you and your mods to contribute to the recap. Ultimately, you still have the final say as to what makes it in.
Clip durations are also being extended from 60 seconds to 5 minutes, letting you capture the most epic moments from your stream. You can also splice together multiple clips to create a more lengthy sizzle reel for audiences to discover. Also coming are Moments. You can now designate the more special clips in your streams as moments, and all of the members of your community will get a special badge to recognize them for being a part of those moments.
Hosting will be making a return with a big update. Hosting allows you to host another streamer’s broadcast on your channel, exposing them to your community. One of the big updates of the feature will allow you to view the chats both from your stream and the channel that is hosting you, so you can interact with a whole new community, or you can choose just to interact with one group. Hosting will also allow you to host multiple channels at the same time, switching between channels at preset intervals.
Classic TV will be at your fingertips on Twitch with channels dedicated to broadcasting ad-supported TV shows, which streamers can co-stream with and share the shows with their own audience, without the fear of DMCA takedowns. No word as to which shows will be made available as they continue to work with companies to whitelist the content.
New rewards for chat will become available, including collectible emotes that come in uncommon, rare, epic and divine, which you get from reward chests that you earn from donating bits or subbing to a channel. Pinatas, much like the hype train, can become available, and chat gets a swing by donating to a channel. If the pinata breaks, everyone gets an exclusive emote for 24 hours.
Mr. Beast also made his presence known at TwitchCon with a tease for his upcoming Beast Games preview coming on Sunday. His watchers brought to the stage a big briefcase with a countdown timer, and if we know Mr. Beast and his briefcases, something good will likely come out of that case when the clock reaches zero.
Only two hours into this year’s TwitchCon, and there is already so much excitement surrounding everything that is about to come this weekend and over the next year. Like Twitch itself, TwitchCon 2026 has something for everyone this weekend; if this morning was any indication, it is going to be a good one.
