YouTube doubles its Partner Program entry bar and puts a floor under Shorts payouts

YouTube is changing the Partner Program on 1 February 2027, and the changes fall into two groups: a higher bar for getting in, and new conditions for staying paid once you are.

Getting in becomes twice as hard. The subscriber requirement stays at 1,000, but the second condition doubles — 8,000 qualified watch hours across the past year, up from 4,000, or, on the Shorts route, 20 million qualified views inside 90 days, up from 10 million. Channels already in the programme are not reassessed against the new entry rule and keep their status.

That reassurance is narrower than it sounds, because three further changes do apply to channels already earning.

The first puts a floor under Shorts earnings where none existed. From February, a channel needs 10 million qualified Shorts views across the previous 90 days to draw from the Shorts Creator Pool in a given month. Today there is no stated minimum: any monetising partner who has accepted the Shorts module takes a share based on their portion of engaged views in each country.

The consequence is blunt rather than gradual. A channel sitting just under the line earns nothing from the pool that month, where previously it would have earned a little. Long-form revenue is unaffected, the channel stays in the programme, and pool earnings restart automatically once the ten million is reached.

Two details matter for planning. The window rolls, so it is always the trailing 90 days rather than a calendar quarter, and views count inside that window regardless of when the video went up — an older Short that finds an audience still counts. YouTube has also said it will detail Shorts incentive programmes aimed specifically at channels below this threshold, with Shopping bonuses and help on brand deals, though no date has been given.

One earning route sits outside the pool entirely. Where an advertiser targets five or fewer channels directly, eligible creators take a 45% revenue share on those ads on top of whatever the pool pays.

The second change redefines what counts as an active channel. The current rule is loose: monetisation may be switched off after six months with no uploads and nothing posted. From February a channel is active if it has no fewer than 1,000 qualified watch hours across the past year, or a million qualified Shorts views inside the last 90 days, or keeps to a minimum cadence — five Shorts or two long-form uploads in each 90-day period.

Falling short on all three marks a channel inactive, but not instantly. There is a further 90 days to reach either the watch-hours figure or the Shorts views figure.

The third change is administrative, and the most likely to catch someone out. Current partners must accept revised terms in YouTube Studio by 31 January 2027: the Shorts Monetization Module, the Watch Page Monetization Module, and where relevant the Commerce Product Module. Miss the date and earnings from those features stop on 1 February until the terms are accepted, though programme status itself is not affected.

This is the item worth putting in a calendar, precisely because it demands no performance at all — only attention. It surfaces in the Studio dashboard or the Earn tab, and a channel nobody signs into regularly can lose revenue purely by not looking.

Channels that began using memberships or Super Chat before 2023 may still sit under the older Commerce Product Addendum. YouTube is migrating them onto the current module, with thresholds and revenue share unchanged.

Fan funding and Shopping keep their existing thresholds — 500 subscribers, three public uploads that qualify within 90 days, plus either 3,000 qualifying public watch hours over a year or three million public Shorts views in the same 90-day window.

Taken together the direction is clear enough. YouTube is raising the cost of entry and attaching conditions to the money at the low end of Shorts, while leaving long-form earnings and the smaller fan-funding tier alone. Whether that reads as tidying up a crowded programme or as squeezing out the bottom of it depends largely on which side of ten million views you happen to sit.