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How to add your game to Twitch before Next Fest

Published · Numbers as of

Twitch builds its game categories from IGDB, a games database Twitch runs. Sign in to IGDB with your Twitch account, add your game, and once IGDB approves it, the category appears on Twitch by itself.

Do it now, not in fest week. For 1,664 of the 4,398 games in the June 2026 Next Fest (38%) we found no Twitch category when we counted on 5 Oct 2026.

Why the category matters

A streamer picks a category when they go live. If your game has none, they pick something else, such as Games + Demos, and the stream is filed among other games. Viewers browsing your game's category won't see it, and you can only find it if the title or the channel happens to mention your game.

With a category, your game gets its own page on Twitch: who is live now, and a Videos tab with the past broadcasts. That page is where you will look for streams during the fest (how to find streams of your game).

How to add your game

  1. Go to igdb.com and log in with your Twitch account. Any Twitch user can add or edit games there.
  2. Search for your game first. If it is already there, check the title and skip to the cover.
  3. Open the Games menu and choose Add Game.
  4. Enter the title exactly as on your Steam page, a short description, a cover, the type and the status. Add the full game rather than only the demo. Twitch Help lists alternative versions of a game as not eligible for a category of their own; it doesn't name demos, but a streamer playing your demo can always pick the game's category.
  5. Add your Steam page under websites, plus screenshots or a trailer. IGDB's FAQ says entries with no gameplay and no links can't be checked and get rejected.
  6. Leave a comment on your contribution saying who you are and that the game is in Next Fest. IGDB says a comment with links makes approval more likely and faster.

How long it takes

An IGDB admin reviews each new game. There is no fixed time: IGDB works through a queue ordered by priority. These raise it, according to the IGDB FAQ:

  • a release date within the next 30 days;
  • a link to an event page within 30 days;
  • votes from other users on your contribution;
  • a developer or publisher account that IGDB has verified.

IGDB usually doesn't review on weekends or holidays. Next Fest starts on Monday 19 October 2026, and the two weekends before it are 10 to 11 and 17 to 18 October, so a game added on Friday 16 October may wait until the fest has started. Once a game is approved, Twitch picks it up automatically; a new cover shows on Twitch 10 to 60 minutes after approval.

Only add a release date that is true. A made-up date to jump the queue is wrong data on a public database.

How many fest games had no category

We took the list of games in the June 2026 Next Fest and looked each one up in IGDB and the Twitch API on 5 Oct 2026, almost four months after that fest ended:

Games in the June 2026 Steam Next Fest, Twitch category checked 5 Oct 2026. Shares are rounded.
Fest gamesGamesNo categoryShare
All4,3981,66438%
With a demo3,2781,29039%

Having a demo made almost no difference: about two in five games had no category we could find, months after the fest.

Check whether yours has one

  1. Search for your game in the Twitch search bar and look under Categories.
  2. If it is there, open it: the page links to the game on IGDB, so you can check the title and cover.
  3. If it is not, search IGDB. A game on IGDB but not on Twitch may be waiting for approval or may not be eligible.

How we counted

The list is the 4,398 games on Steam's June 2026 Next Fest page, from an archived copy of the page. For each game and its demo we looked up the IGDB entry linked to that Steam app and its Twitch category, using the official IGDB and Twitch APIs. For the rest we accepted a Twitch category with the same name, ignoring case, accents and punctuation, if it was the only one and our own Twitch sweeps had seen it streamed. The rules for adding games come from Twitch Help and the IGDB contribution FAQ, both checked 5 Oct 2026.

What this doesn't tell you

  • We counted in October, not during the fest. Some games got a category after June, so the share without one was higher while the fest ran.
  • For 67 games, the category IGDB links to has a different name from the Steam title. Most are subtitles or translations, but a few may be another game; we counted them all as having a category.
  • A game can have a Twitch category whose IGDB entry has no link to its Steam page. We find it only if the name matches and someone streamed it while our sweeps ran, so some games counted as without do have one.
  • We don't know how many of these games were streamed at all. A game nobody streams doesn't need a category; one that gets streamed does.

The numbers come from our own data, counted by a script on the date above. Overheard is run by Mateusz Woskowicz, an independent developer in Poland.

Overheard finds the Twitch streams of your Steam game or demo and tells you where streamers got stuck, what broke and what they liked, each with a link to the minute in the VOD. See a sample report.

Demo in the October Next Fest? Send us its Steam page (form on tally.so): we email you when enough streamers have played it, and you decide then whether the $49 report is worth it.