X Original Content Rewards replaced the platform’s Creator Revenue Sharing program in September 2026: the old program stopped earning on September 7, and the new one opened to applications on September 8. A month on, the change matters more than the launch coverage suggested, because it rewrites what a creator has to post to get […]
X Original Content Rewards replaced the platform’s Creator Revenue Sharing program in September 2026: the old program stopped earning on September 7, and the new one opened to applications on September 8. A month on, the change matters more than the launch coverage suggested, because it rewrites what a creator has to post to get paid.
What changed on September 7 and 8
Creator Revenue Sharing paid accounts based on the attention their posts drew. X has now retired it. Per TechCrunch reporting, X spokesperson Allegra Jacchia said the program “had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned,” and she described it as rewarding reposts over original work. The replacement pays for original reporting and analysis, photos and videos the poster made, memes and graphics the poster designed, and commentary that adds real value. Reposts and re-uploads without meaningful transformation are excluded.
Creators already enrolled in the old program did not roll over automatically. They had to reapply. Sign-ups to the old program had closed in early August, and Gulf News reports the last payout under it landed around September 11, covering earnings through September 7.
The change also follows a rough spring. In April 2026 X cut payouts to aggregator and clickbait accounts, then partly reversed the cut after creators pushed back. The September move is a larger rework of the same idea.
How the eligibility gate works
The reported thresholds are 500 verified followers, a paid Premium subscription, and a minimum number of Home timeline impressions from verified users within 90 days. One detail from the Foundry write-up changes how you should read the impression count: views from non-subscribers do not count toward the threshold or the payout formula. A post can be seen by a million logged-out readers and add nothing to your qualifying total.
That is the mechanism that does the real work. The originality rule decides which posts are eligible. The verified-user rule decides which views count. Together they shift the incentive from reach in general to reach among paying accounts. For a creator, the sensible response is to track impressions by audience type if analytics allow it, since a smaller post that lands with verified readers can out-earn a bigger one that does not.
The sources I read disagree on the impression figure, so check the live Creator Studio page before you plan around it.
| Requirement | TechCrunch reporting (via AI Weekly and Foundry) | Gulf News |
|---|---|---|
| Verified followers | 500 | 500 |
| Impressions | 500,000 Home timeline impressions from verified users in 90 days | 5 million organic impressions in three months |
| Subscription | Paid Premium tier | Premium, Premium Business or Premium Organizations |
| Age and country | 18 or older, supported country | 18 or older, supported country |
What nobody has published yet
Several parts of the system are open questions. TechCrunch’s reporting says X has not specified the payout formula or the size of the reward pool. It has also not explained how “meaningful original value” will be judged at scale, or how AI-generated or AI-assisted work will be treated. Gulf News adds one existing rule: since March 3, 2026, undisclosed AI-generated armed conflict videos can bring a 90-day suspension from revenue sharing.
Payouts are not guaranteed, and Gulf News lists the inputs as verified-user Home timeline impressions, the subscriber tier of each viewer, content format and meaningful engagement. That reads as a weighted score, but no weights have been published. Treat any creator who quotes a per-thousand rate as guessing.
If you publish on X, the practical read is simple. Original video and images made for the platform fit the stated rules best. Quote posts that only add a caption sit in a gray zone. Credit-only reposts are out. Keep records of your own source files, because a dispute about originality is easier to win with the raw footage in hand.
The next thing to watch is the first full set of payout reports from creators in the program, which will show whether the weighting favors video, text or images. Until X publishes the formula, those anecdotes are the only evidence, and they come from a self-selected group.
Sources
