Google-owned platform, YouTube, has announced an update in its requirements for creator monetisation.

YouTube stated that new creators will need to meet higher thresholds to begin earning money from ads and subscriptions, effective February 1, 2027.

Under the new rules, creators must accumulate at least 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year, up from the current 4,000, which is exactly double the previous requirement. For Shorts creators, the threshold rises from 10 million to 20 million qualified views within a 90-day window. However, the subscriber requirement of 1,000 remains unchanged.

The platform also announced a separate change for Shorts specifically: creators will need to maintain 10 million Shorts views over any 90-day period to continue earning through the Shorts Creators Pool. Channels that fall below this mark will keep their partner programme status and continue earning on long-form content, but Shorts revenue will pause until they cross the threshold again.

YouTube framed the changes as a response to its own growth. The platform now sees over 200 billion daily Shorts views and over a billion hours of watch time on TV every day, and says the updated thresholds are designed to keep pace with that scale. Crucially, the changes will not affect creators already enrolled in the YouTube Partner Programme.

The announcement did not arrive in isolation. Over the same weekend, Elon Musk’s X revamped its creator payout guidelines to reward only original content, while Facebook earlier this year launched a new monetisation programme aimed at attracting established creators away from TikTok and YouTube. Across the board, platforms are simultaneously recalibrating the terms on which creators earn, and in most cases, raising the bar.

For YouTube specifically, the timing gives aspiring creators a roughly six-month window to either reach the old thresholds or adjust their strategies before the new rules take effect in February.

Nigeria’s YouTube creator community has grown substantially over the past five years, with a wave of creators across comedy, lifestyle, tech commentary, and Afrobeats content building audiences large enough to monetise. For established names in that space, Monday’s announcement changes little; existing YPP members are unaffected. The pressure lands squarely on emerging creators still climbing toward monetisation. 

Doubling the watch hour requirement means the journey from content creation to earning is now meaningfully longer. For Shorts-first creators, a growing cohort given the format’s popularity among younger Nigerian audiences, the jump from 10 million to 20 million views is especially steep.