Twitch opened its three-day convention with a stack of creator tools, a rethink of Clips, the return of Host Mode, collectible emotes, and a month-long Grand Theft Auto 6 celebration.
TwitchCon San Diego 2026 got underway Friday, November 13, at the San Diego Convention Center, kicking off three days of live shows, gaming, Meet & Greets, panels and experiences that exist only at TwitchCon. The Opening Ceremony set the tone for the weekend. Twitch unveiled a new slate of product updates built around three goals: make it easier to start and grow on Twitch, help a stream’s standout moments travel further, and give communities more ways to take part in and support the creators they love.
Here’s what was announced.
Clips grow up
The biggest shift is in what can count as a Clip. Streamers and editors will soon be able to upload videos made outside a livestream directly as Clips, whether that’s an off-stream moment or a teaser for an upcoming event. That turns Clips from a by-product of streaming into a content format in their own right.
Twitch is pairing that with new tools to:
- Spot the Clips viewers responded to most
- Stitch multiple moments from a VOD into a single Clip
- Experiment with Clips up to 5 minutes long
Category Recaps open a new discovery lane
Building on the recently launched Stream Recaps, Twitch is bringing Recaps to category pages. Viewers get a quick way to catch up on recent moments from the games and communities they follow, and streamers get another surface where new audiences can find them.
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Going live from the browser
For anyone who has bounced off broadcasting software, Twitch is lowering the barrier to entry. Creators will be able to stream directly from their browser, with the essentials built in: alerts, a Chat overlay and ready-made scenes. New streamers can go live first and learn the advanced tools later.
Host Mode returns, and Auto Raids arrive
Host Mode is back. Creators will once again be able to feature another streamer on their channel while they’re offline. Alongside it, Auto Raids will keep communities moving across Twitch even when a streamer forgets to Raid manually at the end of a broadcast.
Stream Rewind for everyone
Stream Rewind, the ability to pause and rewind a live stream, first rolled out to subscribers and Turbo users on Affiliate and Partner channels. Twitch now plans to open it up to all viewers across the platform.
Legendary Emotes make support collectible
In a new limited-time program, iconic global emotes including Kappa, PogChamp and LUL become collectible rewards across four rarity tiers. Viewers unlock them through Watch Streaks, Subs and Gift Subs, giving the people who consistently show up for creators a visible way to display that loyalty in Chat.
Custom Power-Ups get more interactive
Twitch is expanding its Bits-powered Custom Power-Ups with ClipBytes, text-to-speech, and support for GIFs, videos and sounds. The result: more ways for communities to directly shape what happens on stream.
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Getting ready for Grand Theft Auto 6
With Grand Theft Auto 6 on the horizon, Twitch is planning a platform-wide celebration that starts at the game’s launch and runs through November 30:
- Exclusive rewards. GTA-themed Sub Emotes and Badges are available through Subs and Gift Subs, plus an evolving badge that levels up as viewers watch GTA streams. Collect them all and fully evolve the badge to unlock a special Golden Iguana Chat badge.
- Heist Trains. Participating GTA 6 streams will feature GTA-themed Hype Trains with six exclusive emotes designed by streamer LumpyTouch.
- Stream Recaps. Twitch will periodically drop Gift Subs in the channels of streamers who publish GTA 6 Recaps, and will feature selected Recaps from around the world on the Twitch homepage.
- Daily game code drops. Surprise daily drops of GTA 6 game codes will run from launch through the end of November.
Full details on every announcement are on the Twitch blog.
What TwitchCon is all about
Strip away the product news and TwitchCon is a reunion. It’s the one weekend a year when chat becomes a crowd: streamers meet the viewers who have watched them for years, communities that live in Discord servers and emote spam share the same hallways, and new creators pick up the craft in workshops and panels next to the people they learned from. Between Twitch Rivals competitions, Creator Camp sessions, Community MeetUps, live shows and the TwitchCon Party, the convention is built around the idea that live streaming is a shared experience, not a broadcast.
That community is turning out in force. Twitch hasn’t published an official 2026 figure, but based on recent San Diego shows (roughly 23,000 to 30,000 attendees in 2024), this year’s convention is expected to draw an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 creators and fans to downtown San Diego through Sunday, November 15. San Diego remains TwitchCon’s North American home through at least 2028.
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Source: TwitchCon
