Communities Are Here: A New Way to Discover and Connect

Communities Are Here: Discover Great Broadcasts Faster Than Ever

The search for a great stream is something that everyone on Twitch can relate to. Right now, many viewers find new streamers by happenstance — through a Reddit thread, or a Tweet from a favorite streamer, or maybe from a hosted stream on a Twitch channel page. Discovering new streams is a part of what makes exploring Twitch so fun and rewarding. And now we’re making it even easier for viewers and streamers to connect to the content that most interests them.

Introducing the beta release of Communities. Communities are a new discovery tool to help streamers connect to the most relevant audiences and help viewers discover streams that fit their interests easier and faster than ever. Using self-organizing, public groups centered around specific activities (e.g. a type of gameplay like speedrunning, or an activity such as painting) Communities puts more power to discover, share, and connect with new content, friends, and followers in your hands.

Each viewer or streamer has their own unique interests, whether it’s fighting games or plein air painting. Sharing interests already happens between streamers who create Teams, viewers who share what they’re watching with Friends, and chats between viewers and streamers. These connections are part of what makes Twitch so unique, and strengthening them with Communities leads to a more rewarding experience for everyone.

Beginning today, you can find a Communities directory alongside the Games directory. When you open this directory, you’ll be able to view the most popular Communities. If you can’t find a Community that matches your interests, just create one!

Communities is in beta, and this is just the beginning. In the coming weeks and months, we’re looking forward to your feedback to help us add features to make the discovery experience easier and more relevant. Starting today, we have two ways you can share feedback. First, you can provide feedback and product ideas on our product forum, which is where you’ll see and vote on ideas submitted by other users. If you want to have a more in-depth conversation with Twitch streamers or viewers, head to the Twitch Curse server to start chatting.

We’re so excited to see you create, discover, and connect with Communities!

FAQs

As a streamer, how many Communities can I participate in?

In order to best connect you to the audience most relevant to the content you are producing you can only stream to one Community at a time. Selecting a Community is done in addition to selecting a Game.

What happens to the Games Directory and Creative Directory?

They’re not going away! Communities is a separate, more targeted way to discover new broadcasts and stream to the most relevant audience.

Why are some translations missing in my local language?

In our initial launch of the Communities beta, we do not have full support for non-English language Communities. We are working to change this, and translations will become available as soon as possible.

Why can’t I select a Community name that uses non-English characters? And why can’t I filter the list of Communities by language?

In our initial launch of the Communities beta, we do not have full support for non-English language Communities. We are working to change this, and we will support both non-English characters in Community titles and language filtering options as soon as we can.

How can I find Communities in the Twitch mobile apps?

Currently, we do not support Communities in our mobile apps. We plan to do so soon!

How is Twitch planning to handle Communities that violate our Terms of Service?

Communities must adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines without exception. As Communities evolves, we’ll look into whether we need to expand our moderation tools.

I’m a developer, is there an API for Communities?

Yes! See our developer blog post for more information on what endpoints are available and how to get started.

For more details, including how to set up a Community, take a look at our how-to article.