Most-watched Counter-Strike streamers of 2025

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Counter-Strike remains one of the most crowded and competitive categories in livestreaming. It sits at the intersection of elite esports and everyday creator content, which means the audience is massive and the fight for attention is relentless. Standing out here is not a matter of luck or timing. It usually reflects consistency, strong on-air identity and the ability to capture viewers when the biggest matches are on the line.

In 2025, two trends continued to shape that race. Community co-casting kept expanding, with creators from across regions turning top-tier tournaments into personal viewing destinations and, in many cases, outperforming official broadcasts. Multistreaming also played a growing role. While many established Counter-Strike creators still commit to a single platform, those willing to spread their reach across multiple services often saw tangible gains in total viewership. 

Using data from Streams Charts, and presented in partnership with HellCase, this ranking breaks down the Counter-Strike streamers who drew the largest audiences throughout 2025.

Most-watched Counter-Strike streamers of 2025

When you line up the rankings by Hours Watched and Peak Concurrent Viewers, the overlap is striking. In most cases, it’s the same names appearing near the top of both lists, and nearly all of them share one defining trait: close involvement with esports coverage. All in all, competitive Counter-Strike once again proved to be the most reliable engine for scale in 2025.

The gap between creators underlines just how concentrated that attention was. The streamer who finished first by total watch time accumulated eight times more Hours Watched than the creator in tenth place, a spread that highlights how sharply the top tier has separated itself from the rest of the field.

A notable share of the top ten came from the Russian-speaking streaming ecosystem, where collaboration has become almost a competitive advantage. Many of the creators regularly appear on each other’s broadcasts, rotate coverage of different tournaments or stages, and effectively share audience momentum rather than competing for it directly. That interconnected approach continues to translate into sustained, high-volume viewership across the calendar.

Among English-language creators, the standout of the year was Mark “ohnePixel” Zimmermann. Finishing second overall with just under 40 million Hours Watched, he remained firmly anchored to Twitch despite some light experimentation elsewhere. His mix of esports-focused content and strong on-stream personality once again made him the go-to destination for a large part of the Western Counter-Strike audience.

At the very top, however, there was little debate. Alexandre “Gaules” Borba finished 2025 as the most-watched Counter-Strike streamer by a wide margin. Acting as the primary esports hub for Brazilian fans, he leaned heavily into multistreaming, broadcasting across three platforms throughout the year. That strategy paid off across the board, combining strong performance on each service into an imposing total of nearly 69 million Hours Watched, comfortably securing first place in the rankings.

Top 10 Most-Watched Counter-Strike Streamers of 2025

Most popular Counter-Strike livestreamers of 2025

The Peak Concurrent Viewers ranking tells an even clearer story. Nine out of ten creators reached their highest live audience while covering esports matches, reinforcing how powerful community-driven broadcasts have become as alternatives to traditional studio productions. When the stakes are highest, viewers increasingly gravitate toward familiar creator voices rather than official feeds.

The very top of the list was defined by the season’s final Major, the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025. All three leaders hit their personal peaks during that event. Gaules reached his high point during a playoff clash featuring FURIA, as Brazilian fans rallied around their representative against NAVI in the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, several Russian-speaking creators recorded their peaks during Team Spirit’s playoff run, which became one of the tournament’s central storylines.

That pattern extended deeper into the ranking. Among Russian-speaking creators, those who happened to co-cover Team Spirit’s most successful tournaments of the year benefited directly from the team’s momentum. On the English-language side, ohnePixel reached his peak during coverage of Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev’s debut match for FaZe Clan, a moment that generated significant buzz across the scene in spring 2025.

The top ten also included Ömer "imoRR" Karataş, a former professional player turned creator. His peak came during Aurora Gaming’s run to the grand final of the Esports World Cup. Even though Aurora fell short in the final, the event still marked the most successful tournament of 2025 for Turkish Counter-Strike from a financial and visibility standpoint.

The lone exception to the esports-driven trend was Dima Wallhacks. His peak audience came not from a match broadcast, but from a viral community challenge centered around building the tallest possible tower of players, standing out as the only top-ten spike driven purely by entertainment rather than competitive play.

Top 10 Most Popular Counter-Strike Streamers of 2025