[Update, 05.02.2025, 17:15 CET]. We mentioned that Velcuz's high ranking for peak viewership was a result of a significant bot influx on his stream.
The final month of every year tends to witness a decrease in audience statistics due to the holiday season, which is why we saw a brief lull in Twitch's overall audience engagement in December 2024. However, across the first month of the new year, the platform saw slight increases across the board when it came to key viewership metrics.
The purple platform in January 2025 saw green in almost all the main metrics, including watch time, which came in at a solid 1.645 billion Hours Watched (HW). This was a minor spike of 4% compared to December 2024, which might seem negligible, but it is still a lot when looking at the overall figure.
Twitch also touched 2,441,903 Average Viewers (AV), with streamer activity increasing and resulting in the average number of concurrent channels broadcasting jumping by 4%. This was the highest such number in half a year, showing that the viewers are slowly returning to their favourite pastimes of checking out their favourite streamers.
The number of categories broadcast also went over 44,500, showcasing the platform's continuing ability to generate a variety of content for fans. In fact, this was the highest this metric had reached since pre-pandemic days, when the service hit 57,647 games streamed in January 2020.
Marvel Rivals kept the flag flying high for new games in January 2025, improving its top ten finish from December 2024 by climbing three spots to fourth. The third-person hero shooter from NetEase Games continued to bank on content creators, especially from North American English-speaking influencers, and in-game rewards for viewers to boost its engagement on Twitch.
The rest of the leaderboard saw a lot of usual, older games that remain massively popular among audiences and creators retain their top ten spots. The likes of Valorant, League of Legends, and Dota 2 saw surges in their monthly watch times thanks to the start of their respective esports seasons.
However, Escape From Tarkov was the biggest mover, increasing its month-on-month HW numbers by 102%. The game had its newest update a day after Christmas, bringing along Drops, which are always a good way to attract more viewers as they act as incentives for watching the stream.
Topping the most-watched channels list last month was the official handle of GamesDoneQuick, which achieved most of its 9.35 million HW by covering the annual Awesome Games Done Quick's 2025 edition. Joining it on the podium were Marc Robert "Caedrel" Lamont and Thomas Chance "Sodapoppin" Morris, both covering the multiplayer games they are most associated with, League of Legends and World of Warcraft.
There were a few other English-speaking influencers who were part of this January top ten, including Zack "Asmongold" Hoyt (with his secondary channel, Zackrawrr) and Hasan " Hasan" Piker. Both were heavily preferred by political fans who wanted constant coverage of Donald Trump's swearing-in as the President of the United States for the second time.
We also had French star Mohamed "AmineMaTue" Amine Mahmoud lay down an early marker to his colleagues when it comes to Twitch's most popular livestreamed event for the year. The Stream for Humanity 2025 marathon, which involved him banding together with other top content creators from the country to host 24x7 broadcasts, raised over €3,500,000 for Doctors Without Borders, which works in Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Coming to peak concurrent viewership, we already mentioned AmineMaTue setting the early pace for Twitch creators. There was also Velcuz, a lesser-known influencer whose gameplay broadcasts of The Police Mystery, an action-adventure game, and BeamNG.drive, a vehicle simulation video game, caught the attention; however, Velcuz himself admitted to being heavily botted, which explains his unexpectedly high ranking.
Most of the other names on this table are globally renowned streamers with massive fanbases in every corner of the world. Many got high audience engagements thanks to covering esports events or the popular media football league, Kings League, with the exception being Felix "xQc " Lengyel, who was busy playing titles like DayZ and Marvel Rivals.
Top female streamers of January 2025 (by Peak Viewers and Hours Watched)
Two names stand out among female Twitch streamers ranked by PV in January 2025: Alana "Alanalarana" Flores and Henriikka "Henksuliini " Halonen. The former, now part of the Kings League universe, was busy covering its various events. The latter's peak livestream involved her playing the popular party game, Twister, with her friends and fellow influencers.
The list of most-watched female creators, meanwhile, had a familiar feel and look to it. The likes of ironmouse, Emily "Emiru " Schunk, Rachell "Valkyrae" Hofstetter, Emily "ExtraEmily " Zhang, and Yoo "Jinnytty " Yoon-jin made the cut, with the presence of three VTubers showing that streamers from this category would continue to shape the industry and dynamics heading into the new year.
