In light of the new features announced at TwitchCon Europe 2026 in Rotterdam, we speak to CPO Mark Minto about what it means for streamers and creators.17:00, 01 Jun 2026This past weekend saw in excess of 15,000 attendees and livestreaming enthusiasts descend upon the Ahoy convention centre in Rotterdam in aid of this year’s TwitchCon Europe event.‌It was a place where streamers and viewers could finally meet, hardworking mods were celebrated, and fans could enjoy a huge Minecraft activation where exclusive in-game items up for grabs and pre-release Lego sets were shown off. If you needed further proof that Twitch is still the world’s most dominant livestreaming platform, this was it.‌Major announcements made during TwitchCon Europe 2026’s opening keynote included Dual Format streaming updates for vertical and horizontal viewing, expanded 2K (1440p) streaming support, stream Summaries, notification updates and more. Needless to say, if you’re an up-and-coming streamer or even a Twitch diehard who uses the service a lot, worthwhile improvements are seemingly set to roll out throughout the rest of this year.‌As someone lucky enough to cover the event and roam the show floor, I’ll say the excitement from fans was palpable, as people who enjoy games (and even those who don’t) came together to share their love of livestreaming, Vtubing, and more. It was also an excuse to touch base with Twitch’s Chief Product Officer, Mark Minton, and discuss all the new upcoming features announced at the opening keynote, as well as how the platform is gearing up for the upcoming launch of GTA 6 this November.Here’s what he had to say about how Twitch is continuing to adapt and further empower its community…First off, what is it about TwitchCon that makes it different from other gaming/community events, do you think? What makes it so special?What separates TwitchCon from other conventions I've been to is the focus on the community. When you see these communities come together. The example I'll often cite is [when] you see someone that's been moderating for a streamer for six years, and then they happen to be able to cross paths at TwitchCon and the emotion and happiness that goes around those moments. You see all different forms of that.‌This TwitchCon, [has been the] best ever in terms of content, in my opinion, like the Minecraft activation is just absolutely spectacular. There's just a lot of excitement, and that's additive, but it's secondary to what people are here for primarily, which is to come together as a community.You announced that Berlin would be where TwitchCon in Europe would be going next. How excited are you for it, and what vibes do you think it’ll bring?I actually had the privilege of being at the first TwitchCon in the EU in Berlin back in 2019, so I look forward to getting back there. Like all European cities, they all have their unique strengths from entertainment and dining to everything in and around the convention. I'm looking forward to one thing that's consistent though in all these cities, which as an American I also greatly appreciate, is that the rapid transport is really good.‌Being able to get between the venue and the hotel and everything very efficiently, I love it. Rotterdam is great. I ride the subway every day. It's been fantastic. And the venue here is good for us. Rotterdam's been an amazing host, but we've been here three years, and we'll see. I actually don't know how long we'll be in Berlin, but I think it is good to get out and get in as many different cities around Europe as we can.We live in an age where people’s attention is the most valuable currency. What changes in streamer/viewer habits have you noticed and how would you say Twitch is adapting to it?If I go back years ago, what I used to see was what I'll call very focused Twitch creators that did livestreaming and they did livestreaming only. And I think the biggest thing I have seen recently is creators now are using Twitch to create content, engage, and build an audience that ultimately often supports them through direct fan funding opportunities. Then they're creating a YouTube video that's a cut down, edited version of what the livestream was that goes on to work well for them from both a monetization and engagement perspective and introduce them to new audiences.They're then obviously also doing short form content, pushing that out to Instagram and TikTok, et cetera. Those creators are having a lot of success getting leverage out of the time they spend in livestreaming to create even more content, to reach even more audiences that then build a flywheel back to their livestream. That's the biggest change I've certainly seen, where you can be successful as a livestreaming-only Twitch creator, but the ones that seem to be doing it best are using everything… all the tools available to them to reach new audiences.‌Community is obviously key to the Twitch experience... Is it ever hard to find new ways to keep empowering them or do new features/methods tend to pop up quite naturally?I would say we have a lot of good ideas. The community is very passionate and they obviously care a lot about being able to build communities in the livestream, so we have no shortage of ideas. The real challenge is us focusing and prioritising the right things and making sure they have the biggest impact for creators. [Much like] any company, you have a finite amount of resources to do anything. It’s always trying to do more and do faster, so that we can push even more out to the community.We have things where we focus for sustained periods of time. I think short form content's a good example and you'll hear us [talk about] short form content for the foreseeable future. There's a whole bunch of other things out there that we'd love to get to. Another example is the living room experience.We know the living experience could be improved. It is honestly probably next on the list of things that will start biting off as it relates to how we think about improving that for the audience and creators. The idea list is long and we need to be able to move faster and get more stuff out for the community.‌From official Giphy integration to dual streaming, a lot of new upcoming Twitch features were announced at this year’s opening ceremony. Is there one that you’re particularly excited about?The one I'll point at, because it's been such a hard problem, has been creator sponsorships. We talked about bringing three times as many opportunities this year as last year. I'd like that to be 10 times, I'd like that to 100 times by the next TwitchCon.To get brands what they're looking for in terms of measurable impact from influencers and have influencers be happy with what they are supposed to do within a given period of time.Of the things that we talked about consistently and specifically in this keynote, to have over 6,000 streamers do a Minecraft gameplay campaign is just phenomenal and fantastic, and feels very rewarding.‌I think [with] the Giphy thing, we were talking amongst ourselves like, ‘we think this is going to be fun. We think people are going to like this’. But the applause during the keynote was like, ‘yes, they do like it’. And we're excited to get that out in the hands of the community. What do we need to do to make sure that every time you open the app, it's fast, it's a great experience, what you're looking for is there, and you're entertained, right?Obviously, creators are customer number one, but I've tried to bring a lot more focus onto the viewer-experience side of things.Twitch has always been great about developer collaborations, and you only need look at such things as Drops and now Gameplay Ads for evidence. What’s the process of choosing which publishers/developers to work with, and has this only gotten easier over time?I think a lot of what publishers and developers are doing on Twitch is self-service at this point, which has been fantastic. You talk about doing 7,000 drop campaigns in the last year… we can't possibly talk to them all one-on-one. Now when it gets to the big stuff, of course we have strategic conversations through business development folks and leadership where relevant in terms of which partnerships are going to be biggest, most important for the community. A lot of that happens in advance of game launches.‌Embark and Arc Raiders is a great example of a really strong partnership that started well in advance of their game launch last year. We had a TwitchCon activation with them in San Diego for their server slam event that was just tremendously successful, helped them build a community around the game, and then of course the launch was successful. They did drops, and that's probably a good example of what good really looks like with a publisher, developer type integration and partnership type stuff. We'd love to do that with everybody, and sometimes it's a function of what their objectives are and how much they see value in the Twitch side of things.Speaking of important dev collabs, it’s looking very likely that GTA 6 will launch in November (finally). Is the Twitch team ready for what will likely be a monster release?I can say that most any large game coming in the future is someone we're having very specific conversations of how we can help support their goals. Yeah, we'll be ready. We are very actively looking at what we need to do to be ready to support that launch. We have historical data. We know how big these launches will be. I know it's been a while for GTA 5, but we have also the roleplay stuff that's come since then. So we have a pretty good idea of what to expect. And there's a lot of considerations there.Obviously, you have the traffic, the engagement part, any potential partnership with Rockstar that they may want to initiate. And then there's even the advertising side of it, right? You're going to have all this content that is a little harder for many advertisers to run ads in. What are we gonna do to make sure that creators are able to monetise during that time?Article continues belowSo there's a lot of things that go into preparing for something that big. And then, there's always kind of the uncertainty of is it actually going to launch or not. But fingers crossed, we'll have a great game here by the end of this year.