How to Co-Stream on Twitch in 2026: Stream Together, Shared Chat and Event Co-Streams

What “Co-Streaming” Means on Twitch Now

People use the word for two different things, and Twitch now has a separate feature for each:

• Collab streams — you and other streamers are live together, on camera or just on voice. Twitch's tool for this is Stream Together (earlier called Guest Star), plus Shared Chat to merge your chats. This is what most people searching “how to co stream on twitch” or “how to duo stream” want.
• Event co-streams — you rebroadcast someone else's event, typically an esports tournament, and add your own commentary for your community. Twitch announced a dedicated Co-Streaming feature for this in October 2025; it only works if the event's broadcaster has allowlisted you.

Neither is the same as watching several streams at once. If you are a viewer who wants two or more streams on one screen, that is a multi-stream viewing problem — our free Multiwatch tool puts up to nine Twitch, Kick and YouTube streams side by side.

Who Can Use Stream Together

Twitch's Stream Together help page says it is available to anyone with a Twitch account, regardless of monetization status. You do not need to hit the Affiliate requirements first. A session holds up to 6 collaborators. The feature is still labelled Beta, which mostly shows in the browser support: Twitch recommends Chrome.

Setting Up Stream Together in OBS

The seven steps above get you live. These are the details that trip people up the first time.

Your webcam is “in use”

On Windows a camera can only be used by one program at a time, so if OBS already has your webcam, Stream Together cannot see it. In OBS click Start Virtual Camera, then pick OBS Virtual Camera as your camera in Stream Together. In Streamlabs it is Settings → Virtual Webcam → Install, then Start. Note that the virtual camera sends your whole active scene, not just your face.

One browser source, or one per guest

The group link puts every guest in one source that rearranges itself as people join and leave — the Zoom-style option, good for just-chatting and reaction collabs. Individual links give each guest their own source, so you can park each player's camera next to their part of a co-op game. Both live under Settings → Browser Sources. The feed defaults to 1920×1080; Twitch suggests entering 800×600 for the source. By default your own camera is left out of the group feed because most streamers already show it — toggle “include camera in group output” if you want it in. If a link leaks on stream, hit Regenerate at the bottom of that tab and paste the new one. New to browser sources? Our OBS setup guide covers scenes and sources from scratch.

Echo, or guests you cannot hear

Leave Settings → Audio Output on Desktop Audio Capture. It mutes the browser sources and lets call audio reach the stream through desktop audio. Switching to “Control via Streaming Software” while OBS also captures desktop audio is the usual cause of doubled, tinny voices. If guests are missing from your VODs, check that the audio source carrying the call is routed to your VOD track in OBS's Advanced Audio Properties.

Five ways to get people into the call

• Invite Guests — search a channel, or pick from your favorites, subscribers or recent guests.
• Invite link — copy it from the same window and send it over Discord or text. Anyone blocked or banned by someone in the call cannot use it.
• From chat — click a chatter's name and press the purple Invite button.
• Request line — viewers raise a hand to join; you can limit it by follow or sub length and make it audio-only.
• Knock (Drop-ins) — a live streamer knocks on your channel and you accept from the chat notification. Who can knock is set in the Collaboration panel: your Favorites at minimum, optionally channels you follow, all Partners or all Affiliates. You can pause knocks for an hour or the rest of the stream.

You can also make Stream Together mods (picked from your channel mods) who can invite, mute, remove and report guests. On safety, Twitch is explicit: guests are responsible for their own behaviour, and a host is not penalised for a guest's violation as long as they condemn it and remove that guest from the call.

Shared Chat and Shared Viewership

Shared Chat merges the chats of everyone in a Stream Together session into one conversation. It is off by default and only the host can turn it on: click Start Sharing Chat in the backstage window, or type /sharedchat in your chat, which opens the backstage with your mic and camera off. Guests must be live to join. Any guest can leave while staying in the call, and their community leaves with them; the host can end it for everyone.

Viewers see a “Shared Chat” label at the top of chat and under the player listing the collaborators. On desktop, hovering a chatter's name or badge shows which community they came from; on mobile, tap their name. Before you start one, know that other channels' bots and extensions can read and post in the shared chat and see moderation activity.

How moderation works across channels

Each channel's AutoMod level, blocked terms and chat modes apply only to messages from that channel's viewers. Your mods can act on anyone in the shared chat, but the effect on other communities is limited:

If you want a troll banned by your collaborator to stay out of your channel too, turn on Shared Ban Info with that channel.

Shared Viewership: the combined count

Whenever Shared Chat is on, Shared Viewership switches on automatically. It shows the unique concurrent viewers across all collaborating channels, appears in directories and on your channel page, and is used when Twitch sorts streams by popularity — so a four-way collab can rank above each channel on its own. It only qualifies when you are genuinely creating something together. Two channels running the same content with a merged chat to inflate the number falls under Twitch's viewership-tampering rules: the first infraction is a warning, further ones are violations.

Who Gets the Viewers, Subs and Bits

Collaborating never moves money between channels. Twitch says it is exploring shared monetization for collabs but has not shipped any. Here is how each number is counted today:

In practice the viewer who subs is the one who already knows your channel, so a collab pays off in follows first and subs later. If you want to see what your own subs are worth at your current count, run it through the Twitch sub calculator.

Event Co-Streaming: Esports and Big Shows

Co-streaming an event means rebroadcasting its official feed with your camera and commentary on top. It is a big part of esports now: Esports Charts estimates that community broadcasts drew 46.7% of watch time in the first half of 2026 across esports titles with more than 10 million Hours Watched.

The rule that never changes: you need the rights holder's permission. On Twitch, that permission now has a built-in form. Twitch's Co-Streaming feature lets a Main Broadcaster — tournament organizers, brands and select Partners approved by Twitch — keep an allowlist of channels, or open co-streaming to all Partners and Affiliates. The broadcaster then sees combined analytics across every official co-stream.

How to start an official co-stream

1. Go live with the event feed captured in OBS or XSplit, exactly as you normally would.
2. Open the Main Broadcaster's channel. A banner at the top of their stream confirms you are approved.
3. Click the Co-Stream button next to their name and confirm.
4. When you are done, click Stop Co-Streaming on their stream or in the banner in your Stream Manager.

Raid vs Stream Together vs Co-Streaming

A raid is a handoff, not a collab: type /raid channelname and after a short countdown everyone connected to your chat moves to that channel. The two work well together — collab for the stream, then raid your partner at the end.

Collab Streams Without Stream Together

Plenty of streamers still run the call somewhere else and bring it into OBS. That is fine on Twitch; you just give up the built-in extras unless you add them back.

Discord: the simplest route for friends — capture the Discord window in OBS and route its audio into your stream. Discord's own Go Live is for streaming inside a server, not to Twitch; the difference is covered in how to go live on Discord.

VDO.Ninja: a free, browser-based tool that turns each guest's camera into its own OBS browser source. It gives the most layout control of anything here, at the cost of more setup. The remote-guest workflow for talk formats is laid out in our podcast stream setup guide.

StreamYard: a browser studio that streams to Twitch — and, on paid plans, to several platforms at once. It suits interview shows, and is the natural pick if you already multistream. We compare it with Restream and the other cloud studios on our multistreaming tools page.

Tip: even if the call runs in Discord or VDO.Ninja, you can still type /sharedchat to merge chats with a live collaborator — Stream Together opens with your mic and camera off. Shared Viewership only counts for real collaborations, so use it when you are genuinely on stream together.

Making a Collab Worth It

• Pick partners whose viewers would like you. Same game or same kind of show beats a bigger channel with a different audience. Twitch's raid browser has a “Similar Size” filter that doubles as a list of people to ask.
• Name each other in the title and category. Viewers browsing the directory decide from the title, and Shared Viewership only helps if they click.
• Everyone streams it, not just the host. A guest who only appears on your stream brings their voice, not their audience. Ask collaborators to go live with the call on their own channels and turn on Shared Chat.
• End with a raid. The host raids a guest (or the reverse) so the combined chat lands somewhere instead of scattering.
• Make it a recurring slot. A weekly duo show gives both communities a reason to come back. Put it in your schedule and a channel panel so new visitors know when it is on.

Collabs are one lever among several; the rest — schedule, titles, clips, networking — are in how to get more viewers on Twitch.