Today we are announcing the decommission of non-secure WebSocket connections to Twitch IRC servers. Given the minimal use of non-secure WebSocket connections we observe in modern third-party tools, disruption is expected to be low.
What’s changing?
On or soon after August 15, 2025, non-secure (i.e. non-SSL) connections to Twitch IRC via WebSockets will no longer be accepted. Attempts to connect to ws://irc-ws.chat.twitch.tv:80 will result in an HTTP 301 Moved Permanently response status code with the secure URI (wss://irc-ws.chat.twitch.tv:443) in the Location header.
Ahead of the decommission date above, a temporary shutdown will take place between 2025-08-11T17:00:00Z→2025-08-11T21:00:00Z. During this window, developers can expect to receive an HTTP 302 Found redirection response status code with the secure URI in the Location header. Developers are encouraged to take this time to confirm there are no unexpected behaviors in their WebSocket IRC connections.
This change does not affect:
- SSL-based WebSockets (
wss://irc-ws.chat.twitch.tv:443) - SSL-based IRC (
irc://irc.chat.twitch.tv:6697) - Non-SSL-based IRC (
irc://irc.chat.twitch.tv:6667)
What action needs to be taken?
Developers who are using Twitch IRC to read chat and connecting via non-SSL WebSocket connections (ws://irc-ws.chat.twitch.tv:80) should at least update their implementations to use SSL WebSocket connections (wss://irc-ws.chat.twitch.tv:443). Software library contributors should consider disabling or removing the option for connections over port 80. Alternatively, we highly recommend that developers consider using EventSub to programmatically read Twitch chat if possible to take advantage of new chat-related features as they become available (see Example Chatbot).
Please feel free to use the comments section of this announcement for any questions.