How Twitch badges work
What Twitch global badges are, how many ways there are to get them, and why they expire.
What a Twitch global badge is
A global badge is an icon Twitch hands out during a campaign that stays on your account forever, next to your name in any chat. Twitch gives it, not the channel: it does not matter where you meet the requirement.
Campaigns last weeks, sometimes a single day. Once the window closes, the badge cannot be obtained in any way.
The two ways to get them
By watching: accumulating minutes in a qualifying category. Some campaigns ask for consecutive minutes, not scattered ones, which changes how you have to watch.
By subscribing or gifting a sub on a channel streaming in a qualifying category. This is where it does not matter who you subscribe to: Twitch gives the badge.
The category is what matters
Almost every campaign requires the channel to be streaming a specific category. Subscribing on a channel that is in another category does not count, even if it is the channel you always watch.
Some campaigns do not depend on the category (we mark those as “any category”) and others can only be earned on one specific person's channel. That difference is on every badge page, and it is what most people get wrong.
Watch out for the fine print
In some campaigns a subscription is not enough on its own: it gives you an item you then have to “open” by also meeting a watch-time requirement. In others, neither Prime subs nor renewals of a subscription you already had will count.
When a campaign has a requirement like that, we flag it on its page as fine print. Read it before you spend: it is the difference between getting the badge and not getting it.
Where our dates come from
When Twitch publishes a campaign on its blog, the date is official and we mark it as such. Many campaigns are never announced officially: we take those from third-party databases or from what badge-focused channels report, and we mark them as unconfirmed.
We would rather tell you a date is indicative than present it as firm and have you plan around it badly.