Twitch has watched its streamers’ best moments go viral for years, just not on Twitch. That’s about to change. According to Digiday‘s Alyssa Mercante, the platform will let creators upload short-form videos made outside Twitch starting early next year, a move announced during the keynote at TwitchCon 2026 in San Diego.

What’s actually changing

Twitch has had Clips tools for more than a decade, letting streamers and viewers cut moments from live broadcasts and share them on the site. The new uploads go further: creators will be able to bring in edited short videos they made elsewhere, not just raw slices of their streams. Twitch is also adding a “Category Recap” shelf to category pages, filled with clips and recaps, plus new editing tools meant to help creators find highlights and turn them into clips.

Chief product officer Mike Minton told Digiday that Twitch had “missed an opportunity” to make clips work on its own platform, while Twitch creators’ short videos racked up millions of views on TikTok, X, YouTube Shorts and Instagram instead.

“Not trying to be TwitchTok”

Minton was clear that Twitch isn’t chasing TikTok as a destination for endless scrolling. “We’re not trying to be TwitchTok,” he said. The point is discovery. A livestream is a hard first impression, since a new viewer can land in a dead moment with no context. A short clip shows the good part first and then asks for a follow. Over time, Minton said, feeds will get more personalized, with each viewer’s habits deciding whether they see more clips or more live streams.

WeRSM framed the update the same way: a funnel into the live experience rather than a replacement for it. The outlet argued the editing tools may matter more than the feed itself for smaller streamers, who often can’t afford an editor or the hours it takes to cut a long broadcast into usable short videos. Minton told Digiday his focus is the “torso and long tail of creators,” not just the biggest names.

Creators are split

Industry people Digiday spoke with liked the idea. Eric Bogard, CEO of UnderCurrent Talent, called it “a smart thing for them to do,” noting that fans who miss a stream end up on TikTok or YouTube instead. Tim McArdle of creative studio Wildcatter said Twitch is late but “needed to do it,” while also warning that getting people to click over from one platform to another “doesn’t work really at all.”

Some streamers aren’t sold. “People don’t go to Twitch to find clips or videos. They go to YouTube or TikTok,” streamer Vio told Digiday. Frogan was blunter: “No one is going to watch clips on Twitch natively.” Dan “Onepeg” Marshall, who has more than 72,000 followers, was more upbeat, calling Category Recaps one of Twitch’s better discovery ideas, as long as the shelf doesn’t just feature the largest creators in each category.

No short-form paycheck yet

For now, there’s no direct monetization for short-form on Twitch, even though ads will appear among clips. Minton said Twitch is “mostly live monetization,” with about 70 percent of creator earnings coming directly from fans rather than ads, and that the company may find ways to put ads around clips that add to creator earnings later. Click Media’s Justin Miclat told Digiday the move also looks like a way to build more ad inventory.

That fits Twitch’s other TwitchCon news. Marketing Dive‘s Peter Adams reported that the Amazon-owned service launched an in-stream shoppable ad format in open desktop beta for U.S. and Canadian advertisers, letting viewers add products from a Twitch ad to their Amazon cart. A self-serve skippable ad option, where brands pay only when a viewer watches more than 30 seconds, finishes a shorter ad or clicks, is set to enter open beta in December.

The takeaway

Twitch is admitting what creators already knew: discovery happens in short clips, and it has been handing that traffic to other apps. Bringing short-form uploads home could help smaller streamers get found, but until clips pay directly, the money still lives in the live stream. For creators, the smart play is to treat Twitch clips as one more doorway to the channel, not a new income line.

Image: AI-generated illustration.