Twitch removes fan-favorite emotes out of the blue

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Twitch has taken down several popular emotes, including designs featuring Ironmouse, Kai Cenat, and Ibai.

Joining a Twitch chat for the first time can feel chaotic. People chat in many different ways – some flood the chat with emojis, others share long blocks of text, and some just try to have regular conversations.

As a Twitch viewer, I’ve noticed that spamming emotes is just how we all talk in chat – everyone’s got their go-to! It’s cool because each channel has its own special emotes, but there are also a bunch of emotes you can use on pretty much any stream, which is awesome.

Twitch sometimes removes emotes unexpectedly. There’s usually no warning, so you might open the app one day and find an emote you love is simply gone.

Twitch removes 34 emotes in January 2026

As of January 7th, Twitch has removed 34 emotes worldwide, including the well-known “PotFriend,” according to data from Stream Database.

Emotes featuring popular streamers Ironmouse, Kai Cenat, and Ibai – specifically those named IronmouseLuv, StreamerU, and KingWorldCup – have also been removed.

Ironmouse’s special emote was added for VTuber Week in November, and Kai finished his Streamer University and Mafiathon 3 streams in May and October, respectively. Because of this, some people feel it’s reasonable that these items are now being taken down.

Yesterday, Twitch removed 34 popular global emotes, like PoroSad, PotFriend, KEKHeim, FallWinning, and WhySoSerious.

— Stream Database (@StreamDatabase) January 8, 2026

Bandai Namco US announced the removal of the “PotFriend” emote with a sad message. Many agreed it was a shame to see it go, but also pointed out the emote was blurry and didn’t look good when used at a larger size.

One person wondered if the Ironmouse emote was recently added, and expressed surprise that it was being removed.

It seems many of the recently removed emotes were tied to sponsorships that are no longer active. This explains why emotes featuring McDonald’s, EA SPORTS FC, Star Wars, and Fall Guys were all taken down.

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2026-01-08 17:50