YouTube's share of television screen viewing in Poland fell from 2.8% in August to 2.3% in September 2026, according to Nielsen's The Gauge: Poland report for the month, published in October 2026. Streaming as a whole dropped from a record 11.0% to 10.4% of TV screen time, while daily viewing rose by 7 minutes to 3 hours and 38 minutes as the autumn schedules of the traditional broadcasters returned.

In Short

Polish viewers watched a bit more television in September than in August, but a smaller part of that time went to YouTube and Netflix. The change matters to advertisers and broadcasters because streaming had just set a record in August and then gave some of it back once the autumn TV season started. The report shows that big live shows and sport still pull viewers back to scheduled channels each autumn, at least for now.

What Nielsen reported

Nielsen's monthly page carries no day of publication. It is dated only "October 2026" and labelled a two-minute read, so the exact release date cannot be established from the document itself. The figures cover September 2026.

According to Nielsen, Poles aged over four spent an average of 3 hours and 38 minutes per day in front of TV screens in September. That is 7 minutes more than in August, and, according to Nielsen, "exactly the same as in the corresponding period of 2025." The company attributes the rise to the start of autumn programming on traditional channels. "The main driver of this trend proved to be traditional television, especially cable TV, which recorded the most visible growth in share," the report states.

The chart attached to the report gives the full split of total-day viewing for persons 4+:

  • Cable: 38.6%
  • Satellite: 23.2%
  • Terrestrial: 20.5%
  • Streaming: 10.4%, of which YouTube 2.3%, Netflix 1.5% and other streaming services 6.6%
  • Other: 7.3%

The five main categories add up to exactly 100.0%, and the three streaming components add up to the 10.4% headline. Within the document, the shares are internally consistent.

The report does not, however, publish the August split for cable, satellite or terrestrial. So while Nielsen says cable "recorded the most visible growth in share," the size of that growth is not stated anywhere in the document. Nor does the document give September 2025 shares, which means the year-on-year comparison is limited to total viewing time.

The streaming retreat

"After reaching a historic record in August, the online segment experienced a noticeable drop in September," according to Nielsen. Streaming's share of total TV screen viewership fell from 11.0% to 10.4%, which Nielsen describes as "returning below the figures seen during the summer months."

That description checks out against the earlier editions. Streaming held at 10.7% in June 2026, unchanged from May, and stayed at 10.7% in July for a third straight month. Nielsen's own August page, last modified on September 17, 2026, says the 11% threshold had been crossed for the first time. September's 10.4% is the lowest reading since at least May 2026.

The two named platforms took the hit. According to Nielsen, YouTube "maintained its lead" but its share fell from 2.8% to 2.3%. Netflix dropped from 1.9% to 1.5%. Nielsen concludes that the movement was "clearly showing that with the onset of autumn, Polish viewers shifted their attention back toward linear broadcast schedules."

Where the other streaming services went

There is a detail the report's text does not mention. Nielsen's August page gave streaming 11.0%, YouTube 2.8% and Netflix 1.9%, which leaves 6.3% for all other streaming services in August. In September that residual rose to 6.6%.

In other words, the two named platforms lost a combined 0.9 percentage points, while the rest of streaming gained 0.3 points. The net 0.6-point fall in streaming came entirely from YouTube and Netflix. The August residual is a PPC Land calculation from Nielsen's published figures rather than a number Nielsen supplied, but the arithmetic is simple subtraction.

Why might the long tail of streaming grow when the leaders shrink? The methodology section offers a possible answer. According to Nielsen, "live streaming viewership of TV stations on OTT platforms is classified as streaming viewership." Broadcasters' own apps and live channel streams therefore sit inside the streaming slice rather than the cable, satellite or terrestrial slices. An autumn schedule that draws viewers back to broadcaster content could, in principle, push up both linear and the "other streaming" bucket at the same time. The report does not break out that bucket, so this remains an inference rather than a finding.

Shares versus minutes

Shares can mislead when the total changes. Total viewing rose from 3 hours 31 minutes in August to 3 hours 38 minutes in September. Applying each month's shares to each month's average gives a rough sense of the minutes involved. These are PPC Land approximations, since Nielsen's shares are based on average minute ratings rather than a simple split of the daily average, but the direction is instructive.

On that basis, streaming accounted for roughly 23.2 minutes a day in August and roughly 22.7 minutes in September - a fall of about half a minute. YouTube went from about 5.9 minutes to about 5.0, and Netflix from about 4.0 minutes to about 3.3. Other streaming services rose from about 13.3 minutes to about 14.4. Linear television plus the "Other" category gained roughly 7.5 minutes.

So the headline drop in streaming share is mostly a story about the denominator. Streaming time in Poland barely moved; television time grew around it.

What drove the linear increase

Nielsen names four programmes or events behind September's numbers. The most popular included what the company calls "the classic combo" of the drama series "M jak Miłość" on TVP2 and the evening news programme "Fakty" on TVN. Sport added to the total: the European Volleyball Championship matches on Polsat and the UEFA Nations League football matches on TVP1.

The pattern is a familiar one. In September 2024, Polish viewers also averaged 3 hours and 38 minutes a day, about 7 minutes more than in August of that year, with streaming at 8.8%. The following month, October 2024, Nations League matches involving Poland helped lift daily viewing by another 6 minutes. And in September 2025, traditional television viewing in Poland rose while streaming declined, according to Nielsen's separate All Screens Video Landscape data covered by PPC Land.

Three Septembers, then, and the same autumn reflex each time. What has changed is the baseline. Streaming's share in September 2026 is 1.6 points higher than in September 2024, even after the latest drop.

The distribution mix has shifted sharply

Over a longer horizon, the more striking movement is inside linear TV itself. In August 2025, Nielsen's Gauge for Poland put cable at 33.7%, satellite at 30.1% and terrestrial at 23.5%, as PPC Land reported at the time. By June 2026, cable had reached 38.3%, with satellite at 22.7% and terrestrial at 20.7%. July showed cable at 37.7%, satellite at 22.7% and terrestrial at 21.1%.

September's 38.6% for cable is the highest cable share among the editions cited here. Satellite, at 23.2%, sits roughly 7 points below its level of a year earlier. These are platform-of-delivery categories, not channel owners, so the shift says more about how Polish households receive television than about which broadcaster they watch. The Gauge does not explain the movement between satellite and cable, and the September report offers no comment on it.

How the numbers are built

According to Nielsen, the data comes from its single-source panel of 3,500 households and almost 9,700 panelists. The Gauge: Poland "is based on monthly AMR (Average Minute Rating) audience share data," and covers people over four years old. Linear viewing includes time-shifted playback up to seven days, which the chart labels "TV Consolidated+7." The chart's source line describes the input as "Nielsen Single Source Panel Data (Linear TV & Streaming) - TV set AMR data."

Two scope limits follow from that wording. First, the report measures only viewing on television sets. Streaming on phones, tablets and laptops is outside it, which matters most for a platform like YouTube. Second, the "Other" category, at 7.3% in September, "includes views of unrecognized content," according to Nielsen. That slice is not trivial: it is close to three times YouTube's share and larger than all of named streaming combined.

The methodology section ends with one sentence that does not parse: "Nielsen Poland created this iteration of The Gauge using methodologies comparisons." The document gives no further detail on what was compared or whether anything changed in the method for this edition.

Nielsen first published The Gauge in the United States in May 2021, according to the report. The Nielsen Gauge format has since been produced for other countries, Poland among them, and it has not been free of controversy. In March 2026, the delayed US February edition prompted the Video Advertising Bureau to accuse Nielsen of market interference after unreleased figures reportedly showed linear TV well ahead of streaming under revised demographic inputs. Nothing in the Polish report suggests a similar dispute, but the episode is a reminder that methodology shapes the headline.

Why this matters for marketers

Poland's streaming share remains far below the US. In June 2025, streaming took 46.0% of US television viewing and Netflix alone accounted for 8.3%, more than five times Netflix's September share in Poland. For media planners working across European markets, that gap is the main reason Polish budgets still lean on broadcaster inventory.

The September data adds a seasonal caution. Streaming records set in summer, when linear schedules are thin, do not carry straight into the autumn. Advertisers buying CTV reach in Poland on the strength of August's 11.0% would have found a slightly smaller share by September - though, on the approximate minute count, almost the same amount of streaming time.

Netflix's 1.5% is lower than any of the monthly readings cited in this article, which range from 1.7% to 2.1%. For an SVOD service, the figure is a measure of how thin its share of Polish TV time still is. Whether October restores the summer levels or extends the decline is the next data point, and Nielsen's own pattern suggests the answer will depend on the autumn sports calendar as much as on any streaming release.

PPC Land has tracked the Polish edition of The Gauge since early 2024, when streaming first reached a record 7.6% share. That figure has since grown by roughly 3 to 3.5 points. The direction is not in doubt. The speed, judging by months like this one, is slower and more seasonal than the August record implied.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Nielsen, through its Polish panel of 3,500 households and almost 9,700 panelists, measuring viewing by Poles aged over four. YouTube, Netflix and the broadcasters TVP, TVN and Polsat feature in the results.

What: The Gauge: Poland for September 2026 shows daily TV screen viewing up 7 minutes to 3 hours 38 minutes, streaming's share down from a record 11.0% to 10.4%, YouTube down from 2.8% to 2.3% and Netflix down from 1.9% to 1.5%. Cable took 38.6%, satellite 23.2%, terrestrial 20.5% and unrecognized content 7.3%. Other streaming services rose to 6.6% from an implied 6.3%.

When: The data covers September 2026. Nielsen published the report in October 2026 without giving a day.

Where: Poland, television sets only, including linear viewing time-shifted up to seven days.

Why: Nielsen attributes the shift to the launch of autumn schedules, led by "M jak Miłość" on TVP2, "Fakty" on TVN, European Volleyball Championship matches on Polsat and UEFA Nations League matches on TVP1. For advertisers, the data shows that Poland's summer streaming peak did not survive the start of the broadcast season, even though streaming minutes barely changed.