YouTube will roughly double the activity thresholds required to join the full YouTube Partner Program, the company announced on August 10, 2026. The change takes effect February 1, 2027, and marks the first major rewrite of entry requirements since 2018.

Under the new rules, creators seeking ad and Premium revenue will need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 valid public watch hours over the previous 12 months, up from 4,000, or 10 million valid public Shorts views over 90 days rising to 20 million. The subscriber count itself stays at 1,000. The overhaul also introduces an ongoing floor for Shorts earners: creators must maintain 10 million Shorts views per 90-day window to keep their share of Shorts ad and subscription revenue. If views dip below that line, Shorts revenue sharing pauses and resumes automatically once the threshold is cleared again.

Existing Partner Program members are grandfathered under the current, lower thresholds. They do not need to re-qualify, but they must accept updated program terms in YouTube Studio by January 31, 2027. The lower-tier thresholds for fan funding features such as channel memberships and Super Chat, as well as YouTube Shopping access, are unchanged at 500 subscribers with either 3,000 watch hours or 3 million Shorts views over 90 days.

YouTube framed the change as a way to keep advertiser trust high as the platform scales. To balance the higher bar, the company said it will offer extra rewards, including shopping bonuses and brand-collaboration incentives, to creators who drive popular trends or deliver strong channel growth. It is also expanding the Premium Lite subscription tier for existing partners, widening the pool of subscription revenue shared with creators.

For creators approaching monetization, the takeaway is to audit watch time now rather than in January. Channels sitting between 4,000 and 8,000 hours need roughly twice the viewing they planned for, so the next four months are the window to close the gap. Shorts-first channels should watch the 90-day rolling view count as closely as subscriber growth, since the new maintenance floor makes consistency, not spikes, the thing that keeps revenue flowing.