Rocket League undergoes 2026 resurgence with 1 million+ players

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 26/01/2026

Over 10 years later, and Rocket League is seemingly still thriving as the game reached one million players for the first time in five years.

On January 23rd, Psyonix posted a public statement thanking the community after more than 900,000 players were playing concurrently.

This was the highest count since 2020, but then Rocket League passed the 1 million player mark later that weekend.

Rocket League seemingly peaked at 1,086,329 players, while the highest player count in 2025 was around 797k in December.

And the highest before last year was around 629k players in March.

Rocket League just released South Park cosmetics in the game, with free toppers and paid decals, which may have boosted the player count.

However, the primary factor seems to be due to popular American Twitch streamer Nicholas ‘Jynxzi’ Stewart.

Jynxzi has 8.8 million followers on Twitch after streaming every single day of 2025.

He also just became the most subscribed Twitch streamer for the third time in his career, with over 81k subs at the time of writing.

Jynxzi has recently been making a lot of Rocket League content, including watching esports games and playing against pros.

The streamer also co-streamed the recent RLCS matches and had thousands more viewers than the official broadcast.

It could be perfect timing, considering the first Rocket League esports major of the year will be held in America.

The Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) Boston Major will take place from February 19th to February 22nd.

Many esports pros will be in attendance, including potentially Manchester City’s first-ever Rocket League roster.

Jynxzi has said he is planning on doing a watch party for the entire event on his stream, which could be huge for the esport.

Claims that Rocket League is dying

This recent boost in players counters the arguments of many who had claimed that Rocket League is dying.

The game was released back in 2015 and a lot of players have been desperate for bigger updates than the occasional cosmetics collab.

Multi-time RLCS champion Axel ‘Vatira’ Touret claimed Rocket League was dead back in November as his frustrations with the game overboiled.

However, his complaints weren’t with a lack of content but rather with DDoS attacks that were plaguing the game.

Especially at a higher rank, players were constantly met with lobbies where they couldn’t move and would time out.

This was causing the team with a cyberattacker to win by default and was ruining pro players’ practice.

Psyonix and Epic Games promised that Rocket League DDoS attacks are being dealt with, but progress seems to be slow.

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

In my seven years of esports writing, I've introduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I'm most proud of the latter.

All Posts By Jack Stewart