Kick vs Twitch by Language in 2026: Where the Russian-Speaking Viewers and Streamers Are

Russian-speaking viewers are far more numerous on Twitch in 2026. According to Streams Charts, between July 1 and September 25, 2026, Russian-language streams earned about 499 million watch hours on Twitch and only about 36.6 million on Kick. That means Kick accounts for less than 7% of Russian-language viewing across the two platforms. Kick beats Twitch in other languages: Arabic, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Thai. For a streamer from Russia or the CIS, the takeaway is simple: Twitch has more audience and more competitors, while Kick has less of both.

Table: language, Twitch, Kick

The figures below are watch hours for Q3 2026 (July 1 to September 25, 87 days) from the Streams Charts sample. The language is set by the streamer in the stream settings. The brackets show the language's share within the platform, where it has been published.

Language	Twitch, watch hours	Kick, watch hours
English	2.09 billion (49.9%)	426.5 million (24.6%)
Russian	499.0 million (11.9%)	36.6 million
German	305.2 million (7.3%)	under 4.7 million
French	262.9 million (6.3%)	9.7 million
Japanese	258.9 million (6.2%)	75.2 million (4.3%)
Spanish	246.6 million (5.9%)	315.7 million (18.2%)
Portuguese	182.6 million (4.4%)	233.5 million (13.5%)
Polish	46.5 million	84.5 million (4.9%)
Arabic	15.8 million	286.4 million (16.5%)
Thai	13.0 million	45.2 million (2.6%)
Turkish	7.8 million	109.2 million (6.3%)

The share of Russian within Kick itself is not listed separately in this sample. If you divide 36.6 million hours by the total volume implied by the published shares of the other languages, you get roughly 2%. That is our own estimate, not a Streams Charts figure.

Which language is stronger where

Languages where Twitch has no rival

Russian, German and French are three languages where Kick is barely present. German streams earned less than 1.5% of the two platforms' combined total on Kick, French about 3.5%, Russian about 6.8%. English formally goes to Twitch as well: 2.09 billion hours against 426.5 million. But for Kick, English is still the biggest language, accounting for almost a quarter of all hours on the platform.

For Twitch, Russian is the second-largest language after English. Roughly every eighth watch hour on the platform goes to Russian-language streams.

Languages where Kick has already overtaken Twitch

• Arabic is the clearest lead: about 95% of Arabic-language viewing across the two platforms goes to Kick. There are around 11,100 Arabic channels on Kick in the sample.
• Turkish is about 93% on Kick's side. Kick has the most channels in Turkish among the languages listed, around 28,500.
• Spanish and Portuguese put Kick ahead by roughly 56 to 44. This is no longer a niche story: Spanish-language Kick (315.7 million hours) is bigger than all of German-language Twitch, and Portuguese Kick roughly doubled over the quarter.
• Polish, Czech, Finnish, Thai Kick is ahead here as well, with a share of roughly 60 to 78%.

Japanese sits in the middle: it is clearly bigger on Twitch (258.9 million hours against 75.2 million), but Japanese Kick is growing fast, and it has only about 933 channels.

How the picture changed in 2025-2026

We found no public monthly or quarterly language statistics for 2025. What exists is the overall volume of the platforms and a comparison of language shares between Q2 and Q3 2026.

Overall platform volume

According to Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet reports, in Q3 2025 Twitch earned 4.61 billion hours and Kick 1.53 billion. In Q4 both platforms dipped: Twitch to 4.38 billion, Kick to 1.22 billion (down 20.5%). In 2026 Twitch holds steady: 4.55 billion in Q1 and 4.52 billion in Q2. Kick is growing: 1.27 billion and 1.34 billion. For Q3 2026, the Streams Charts report gives Twitch 4.51 billion hours and Kick a record 2.04 billion (up 30.7% on the previous quarter). The analysts use different methodologies, so Stream Hatchet and Streams Charts figures should not be compared directly, but the direction is the same.

Language shifts over the quarter

Language and platform	Share in Q2 2026	Share in Q3 2026
Russian on Twitch	12.4%	11.9%
English on Twitch	48.6%	49.9%
Portuguese on Twitch	5.0%	4.4%
Portuguese on Kick	8.7%	13.5%
Arabic on Kick	19.6%	16.5%
Turkish on Kick	8.9%	6.3%
Thai on Kick	under 0.1%	2.6%

What this shows. Russian on Twitch lost a little share but remains the platform's second language. The Portuguese audience is moving to Kick: daily hours there roughly doubled, while on Twitch they fell by about 9%. Spanish is growing on both platforms, faster on Kick (about 24% a day against 8% on Twitch). Turkish Kick fell by about 10% a day over the quarter, while Arabic grew by about 7%; its share dropped only because the other languages grew faster.

For a long-term comparison: in the first half of 2021, according to a joint analysis by Streams Charts and Cybersport.ru, the Russian-language segment accounted for about 5% of Twitch viewing. Now it is about 12%. The samples and methodology were different back then, so treat this as a guide, not an exact growth figure.

How many viewers there are per channel

Watch hours show the size of the market, but not how crowded it is. For that, it is more useful to see how many channels share the audience at the same time. TwitchTracker publishes average values for the last 7 days. We took them on October 29, 2026, so this is roughly the week of October 22 to 28.

Language on Twitch	Average viewers	Average live channels	Viewers per channel
English	1,003,097	53,897	about 19
Russian	264,397	6,775	about 39
German	170,461	4,508	about 38
Portuguese	136,398	4,474	about 30
Turkish	5,096	282	about 18

For Spanish, TwitchTracker showed no values on the page, so it is not in the table.

At first glance, Russian-language Twitch looks generous: almost 40 viewers per channel, twice as many as in the English segment. But this is an arithmetic mean, and the audience is distributed very unevenly. According to the same TwitchTracker, the ten biggest Russian-language channels take about 14% of all watch time over the week. The rest is shared by thousands of channels, and most of them have single-digit viewer counts. A newcomer competes not with the average channel, but with those standing next to them in the category listing.

For Kick there is no similar public data on the number of Russian-language channels. We can only estimate the general background: 36.6 million hours over 87 days is, on average, about 17.5 thousand concurrent viewers across all of Russian-language Kick (our calculation). For Twitch the same calculation gives about 239 thousand, which is close to the weekly TwitchTracker value. There is an example of how density differs between platforms within one language: Polish channels on Kick number about 4,300 in the Streams Charts sample, versus about 10,300 on Twitch, while Kick has more hours. Per Polish channel, Kick got roughly 4 times more watch hours than Twitch.

What this means for a Russian-speaking streamer

Twitch: a big market and dense competition

If your goal is the maximum of Russian-speaking viewers in the long run, Twitch has no alternative between these two platforms for now. It has a viewing habit, raids, and big communities around Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and Just Chatting. The downside is that the directory is overcrowded: thousands of Russian-language channels are live at once, and a small stream easily gets lost at the bottom of the list. A regular schedule, collaborations and small niches inside big games help you grow here.

Kick: a small market, but every viewer is more noticeable

The Russian-language segment of Kick is roughly 14 times smaller than on Twitch. But it also has fewer channels, so even a small viewer count lifts you closer to the top of the directory when a viewer filters it by language. Kick's strong categories according to Streams Charts for July 2026 are GTA V (mostly roleplay servers), IRL, action games, EA Sports FC 26 and Valorant, plus a separate Slots & Casino category. For a Russian-speaking streamer these are the obvious niches: the platform already brings viewers to them, and there are few Russian-language competitors.

Keep the technical details in mind. Until a channel on Kick has roughly 75 concurrent viewers, the audience sees 720p60 at most. And Kick payouts go only through Stripe, which is not available in Russia and most CIS countries. For a detailed breakdown of money, payouts and requirements, see the article Kick vs Twitch: which is better for CIS streamers, and the platforms' shares of subscriptions and donations are compared in how much platforms pay streamers.

Should you change your stream language

Some CIS streamers think about switching to English for reach. The numbers show it is no magic way out: in the English segment of Twitch there are about 19 viewers per channel against 39 in Russian, and competition there is higher. A bilingual stream makes sense if you really speak the language fluently and already have a foreign audience. Otherwise it is better to stream in your native language and choose the platform by niche.

A practical way to start

1. Work out where your game or format gathers viewers. GTA V RP, IRL and casino content pull toward Kick, while esports titles and talk streams pull toward Twitch.
2. Look through the directory of the category you need, filtered by Russian, on both platforms at your usual stream time. Count how many channels are live at once and what the viewer count is in the middle of the list.
3. Pick a main platform and keep a regular schedule on it for at least a month. If you pick Kick, step-by-step setup is in the guide how to stream on Kick: stream key and OBS.
4. After a month, compare your average viewers and follower growth. Your channel's numbers matter more than general market charts.

The hardest part on any platform is the first weeks, when you have zero viewers in the directory and nobody notices you. A starting audience helps with this: on stream-promotion.ru you can order viewers and followers for Kick and Twitch, and in the viewer control panel you can put together a plan for the length and timing of your streams.

FAQ

Where are there more Russian-speaking viewers: on Kick or on Twitch?

On Twitch, and by a wide margin. From July 1 to September 25, 2026, Russian-language streams earned about 499 million watch hours on Twitch and about 36.6 million on Kick, according to Streams Charts.

What place does Russian hold on Twitch?

Second after English. In Q3 2026 it accounted for 11.9% of all Twitch watch hours, in Q2 for 12.4%.

In which languages is Kick more popular than Twitch?

In Arabic, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Thai, Czech and Finnish. The lead is strongest in Arabic and Turkish: more than 90% of the two platforms' viewing goes to Kick.

How many Russian-language channels stream on Kick?

We found no public data on the number of Russian-language channels on Kick. Streams Charts publishes such figures only for individual languages, for example Turkish (about 28,500 channels) and Polish (about 4,300).

What is the average number of viewers per Russian-language Twitch channel?

According to TwitchTracker's weekly data at the end of October 2026, about 39: 264 thousand viewers across 6.8 thousand live channels. This is an average; most small channels have much lower viewer counts.

Are there language statistics for 2025?

We found no consolidated public language statistics for Kick and Twitch for 2025. There are overall platform volumes by quarter from Stream Hatchet and separate language figures, for example about 63.1 million hours of Ukrainian-language Twitch in 2025 according to Streams Charts.