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Short answer
YouTube removed 2,732,395 channels in Q2 2026, the latest published quarter, and 15,875,020 in 2025, according to Google’s Transparency Report. Spam accounted for 84.5% of Q2 2026 removals. Since Q2 2025 Google counts each channel only once, so earlier quarters are not directly comparable. Channels are not creators: spam operations often run many channels.
Key takeaways
- YouTube removed 15,875,020 channels in 2025 and 28,757,086 in 2024, according to Google’s Transparency Report.
- In the first half of 2026, 4,916,314 channels were removed; Q2 2026 (2,732,395) is the latest published quarter as of October 9, 2026.
- Spam was the reason for 75.6% to 96.0% of channel removals in every quarter from Q1 2024 to Q2 2026.
- From Q2 2025, Google counts each channel once and files deceptive practices under spam; from September 2026, impersonation also counts as spam.
- The report excludes copyright, privacy and legal removals and does not break channel removals down by country.
How many YouTube channels have been terminated? Google publishes the answer every quarter in its Transparency Report, but the numbers are buried in an interactive dashboard and change meaning with each methodology update. This tracker puts every quarter since 2024 in one table, adds the reasons and spells out what the numbers can and cannot tell you. Data retrieved October 9, 2026; Q2 2026 is the latest published quarter.
How many YouTube channels have been terminated?
YouTube removed 15,875,020 channels in 2025 and 4,916,314 in the first half of 2026, according to Google’s Transparency Report. In 2024 the report listed 28,757,086 removed channels, and in Q4 2023 alone 20,592,341.
Two corrections before you quote anything: the popular “12 million terminated channels in 2025” is the January–September 2025 total (12,460,248), and channels are not creators. TeamYouTube put it bluntly on X in December 2025: channels terminated do not equal creators terminated, because spam operations run many channels.
YouTube channel removals by quarter, Q1 2024 – Q2 2026
Channel removals swing widely from quarter to quarter, and the largest swings are spam sweeps.
| Quarter | Channels removed | Spam share | Videos removed | Videos removed via channel termination | Comments removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2024 | 15,799,880 | 96.0% | 8,295,304 | 103,815,590 | 1,443,821,162 |
| Q2 2024 | 3,260,974 | 80.4% | 8,497,876 | 56,578,636 | 1,372,493,981 |
| Q3 2024 | 4,874,056 | 84.4% | 9,116,182 | 72,798,088 | 1,299,463,720 |
| Q4 2024 | 4,822,176 | 87.2% | 9,456,987 | 54,199,703 | 1,252,749,574 |
| Q1 2025 | 2,897,659 | 81.8% | 8,617,605 | 47,296,899 | 1,295,914,835 |
| Q2 2025 * | 2,105,778 | 76.0% | 11,408,261 | 55,015,741 | 1,448,003,664 |
| Q3 2025 | 7,456,811 | 92.7% | 12,139,839 | 74,004,873 | 1,507,538,448 |
| Q4 2025 | 3,414,772 | 81.9% | 8,634,204 | 69,400,808 | 1,383,370,399 |
| Q1 2026 | 2,183,919 | 75.6% | 9,804,544 | 69,271,993 | 1,598,954,734 |
| Q2 2026 | 2,732,395 | 84.5% | 11,159,676 | 86,686,063 | 1,551,576,962 |
* From Q2 2025, each channel is counted once and certain deceptive-practices terminations count as spam. Totals: 2024 – 28,757,086 channels; 2025 – 15,875,020; January–September 2025 – 12,460,248; H1 2026 – 4,916,314.
Why are YouTube channels removed?
YouTube channels are removed overwhelmingly for spam: 2,310,181 of the 2,732,395 channels removed in Q2 2026 (84.5%) fell under spam, deceptive practices and scams. According to the Transparency Report, a channel is terminated after three Community Guidelines strikes in 90 days, a single case of severe abuse, or when it is wholly dedicated to violating the guidelines – which, as Google notes, is often the case with spam accounts. When a channel is terminated, all of its videos are removed.
| Reason (Q2 2026) | Channels removed | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Spam, deceptive practices and scams | 2,310,181 | 84.5% |
| Nudity and sexual content | 137,130 | 5.0% |
| Child safety | 136,252 | 5.0% |
| Harmful or dangerous content | 48,269 | 1.8% |
| Violent extremism | 30,210 | 1.1% |
| Harassment | 26,147 | 1.0% |
| Hate | 24,603 | 0.9% |
| Multiple violations | 7,741 | 0.3% |
| Violence | 6,865 | 0.3% |
| Other | 4,997 | 0.2% |
Shares calculated by ChannelTerminated from Google’s counts. What each reason means for an appeal: spam, deceptive practices and scams, child safety, and all others in the termination reasons guide.
How many videos and comments does YouTube remove?
Far more videos disappear through channel terminations than through individual removals. In Q2 2026, YouTube removed 11,159,676 videos individually and another 86,686,063 because the channel they belonged to was terminated – when a channel is terminated, all of its videos are removed. The same quarter saw 1,551,576,962 comments removed. Over the ten quarters in this tracker, videos removed through channel terminations never fell below 47 million per quarter, which shows how much content sits on channels that end up terminated, most of them spam channels.
What changed in how YouTube counts terminations?
Google changed its counting method from Q2 2025, so any comparison across that line needs a caveat.
From Q2 2025: Google counts each channel only once, even if it has several Community Guidelines violations, and certain terminations for deceptive practices moved from misinformation to spam (the label became “Spam, deceptive practices, and scams”). From September 2026: channel removals for impersonation count under spam, which will affect Q3 2026 onward. Do not read the 2024-to-2025 drop as a policy change without this context.
What does this data not show?
The report covers Community Guidelines enforcement only – several things creators care about are missing:
- Copyright terminations, privacy removals and legal removals – see copyright strike terminations.
- Channel removals by country (Google breaks down only video removals by country).
- How many channels were reinstated after an appeal – the report publishes appeal numbers for videos only; see appeal outcomes.
- How many people are behind the channels.
- Q3 2026, the quarter of the latest search-interest wave – not yet published as of October 9, 2026.
We take the quarterly figures directly from Google’s Transparency Report data (YouTube Community Guidelines enforcement), retrieved on October 9, 2026, without adjustments. Annual totals are sums of the published quarters; percentage shares by reason are our calculation from Google’s counts. Spam shares per quarter are Google’s. We mark Google’s methodology changes where they apply and do not back-calculate earlier quarters. We do not add estimates, survey data or numbers from press reports.
How to use this data
Use the numbers to describe enforcement at platform level, not to predict what happens to a single channel.
- Quote the quarter and the source“YouTube removed 2,732,395 channels in Q2 2026, according to Google’s Transparency Report.”
- Say “channels”, not “creators”One spam operation can account for thousands of channels.
- Flag the method changeComparisons across Q2 2025 need the note that each channel is counted once from then on.
- Pair numbers with dates of eventsOur termination waves timeline and policy changelog show what happened in each quarter.
- Link back so readers get updatesWe refresh the tracker after each new quarter.
Cite this data: ChannelTerminated, YouTube Termination Tracker, updated October 9, 2026, CC BY 4.0. https://channelterminated.com/data/termination-tracker/ – underlying source: Google Transparency Report.
Looking for the story behind the numbers? Read why so many YouTube channels are being terminated.
Frequently asked questions
How many YouTube channels have been terminated in 2025?
Google’s Transparency Report lists 15,875,020 YouTube channels removed for Community Guidelines violations in 2025. The often-quoted figure of “12 million” covers only January to September 2025 (12,460,248). These are channels, not people – as TeamYouTube itself pointed out, spam operations often run many channels at once.
How many YouTube channels have been removed in 2026 so far?
In the first half of 2026, YouTube removed 4,916,314 channels: 2,183,919 in Q1 and 2,732,395 in Q2, according to Google’s Transparency Report. Q2 2026 was the latest published quarter as of October 9, 2026. Numbers for July to September 2026, the period of the latest termination wave, were not yet available.
Which YouTube channels have been terminated?
Google’s Transparency Report does not name channels; it publishes counts by policy. In Q2 2026 YouTube removed 2,732,395 channels: 2,310,181 for spam, deceptive practices and scams, 137,130 for nudity or sexual content, 136,252 for child safety, 48,269 for harmful or dangerous content, 30,210 for violent extremism, 26,147 for harassment and 24,603 for hate speech. Most removed channels are spam operations, not individual creators, and copyright terminations are not included.
Why are YouTube channels removed?
Mostly for spam. In Q2 2026, 2,310,181 of 2,732,395 channel removals (84.5%) were for spam, deceptive practices and scams. Nudity and sexual content (137,130) and child safety (136,252) followed far behind. According to the report, a channel is terminated after three strikes in 90 days, a single case of severe abuse, or when it is wholly dedicated to violating the guidelines.
Did YouTube terminate fewer channels in 2025 than in 2024?
The reported number fell from 28,757,086 to 15,875,020, but the drop is not a clean trend. From Q2 2025, Google counts each channel only once even if it has several violations, and it moved certain deceptive-practices terminations into the spam category. A single very large quarter, Q1 2024 with 15,799,880 removals, also shapes the 2024 total.
Does the tracker include copyright terminations?
No. Google’s YouTube Community Guidelines enforcement report does not include removals for copyright, privacy or other legal reasons, so channels terminated for three copyright strikes are not in these numbers. The report also does not break channel removals down by country; country data exists only for video removals.
How often is this tracker updated?
We update the tracker after Google publishes a new quarter in its Transparency Report and note the retrieval date on the page. The current version uses data retrieved on October 9, 2026, with Q2 2026 as the latest published quarter. Methodology changes announced by Google are added to the notes as soon as we find them.
Free to reuse with attribution – cite as: ChannelTerminated, “YouTube Termination Tracker: Channel Removals by Quarter and Reason”, https://channelterminated.com/data/termination-tracker/ (CC BY 4.0)
- Google Transparency Report – YouTube Community Guidelines enforcement (data retrieved October 9, 2026)
- Google Transparency Report Help 9198203 – methodology and changes
- YouTube Help 2802168 – Channel or account terminations
- TeamYouTube on X, December 11, 2025 (channels terminated vs. creators terminated)