The Longest-Running Live Cams on YouTube

Most live cams don’t last. Power cuts, broken cameras, YouTube glitches and owners who lose interest all end streams, and once a stream ends, the clock resets.

A handful have never ended. We scanned YouTube for the oldest live streams still running and found four real cams that have been live, on the same unbroken stream, since 2017 or 2018.

None of them show anything dramatic. A town square, a seaside village, a cathedral and an otter pond. That might be exactly why they’ve lasted.

How We Measured It

Every YouTube live stream records the exact moment it went live, in a field called actualStartTime. We used YouTube’s official Data API and our own Python scripts to scan thousands of live streams and sort them by that start time.

There’s one strict rule: it has to be the same stream. YouTube can ride out a short dropout, but if a stream ends, the cam comes back as a brand-new stream with a new address, and the clock resets to zero. Plenty of cams have been around for longer than these four, but their streams have ended and restarted along the way.

We first ran the scan in January 2026 and rechecked all four cams in October 2026.

This is a ranking of the oldest qualifying cams we found, not a complete record of every stream on YouTube.

Why No Music Streams?

Our scan turned up a few streams that have run even longer than our #1. They include a home shopping channel, a religious TV network, two music loops and a fan-run gaming stream.

They’re impressive in their own way, but they’re not cams. They play out a schedule or a playlist from a studio or a server.

This list is only for real cameras pointed at the real world, with nothing scripted.

4. Otter Cam, Maryland

Calvert Marine Museum · Live since September 28, 2018 · 2,943 days

At the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, a camera watches over the outdoor pool in the museum’s river otter exhibit.

Some days the otters are tumbling through the water. Other days all you’ll see is a rock and a log. The cam has never cared either way, and has kept rolling for more than eight years.

Explore more cams in the United States, from Alaska’s bears to Florida’s beaches.

3. Orvieto, Italy

Umbria Webcam · Live since August 8, 2018 · 2,994 days

High on a cliff of volcanic rock in Umbria, the hill town of Orvieto is crowned by its cathedral. Work on the Duomo di Orvieto began in 1290, and its striped walls and glittering Gothic front took centuries to finish.

Umbria Webcam’s camera faces straight onto Piazza Duomo. By day you’ll see tourists stopping to stare up at the front. At night the square empties and the floodlit cathedral glows.

The building has stood for more than 700 years. The cam is trying its best to keep up.

More cams in Italy.

2. Renesse, Netherlands

Hage Hosting · Live since June 11, 2018 · 3,052 days

Renesse is a small seaside village on the island of Schouwen-Duiveland, in the Dutch province of Zeeland. In summer, its wide, dune-backed beach fills with holidaymakers.

Hage Hosting’s camera looks over a square in the village center. Café terraces fill up on warm evenings, and in winter it’s often just the lamplight and the odd cyclist.

It’s been running since June 2018, through eight North Sea winters, on the same stream it started with.

More cams in the Netherlands.

1. Lanškroun, Czechia

Nordic Telecom Lanškroun · Live since December 1, 2017 · 3,244 days

Lanškroun is a small town in the east of Czechia, with about 10,000 people. Its main square is lined with colorful old houses, with the white Renaissance town hall standing in the middle.

Nordic Telecom Lanškroun’s camera has been watching that square since December 1, 2017. Since then it has filmed market days, Christmas trees, snow, summer evenings and empty early mornings, all on one unbroken stream.

That’s 3,244 days and counting, the longest run of any real cam we found on YouTube. It’s nothing spectacular, just a town getting on with life, and nearly nine years of it on a single stream.

Why 2017 and 2018?

All four of our cams, and every long-running stream in our scan, went live between late 2017 and late 2018. We didn’t find anything older still running.

We don’t know for sure why. YouTube has never said that anything changed around then. It may simply be survival of the fittest: many cams started earlier, but over eight or nine years almost all of them hit a power cut, a broken camera or a stream that crashed. Every one of those restarts sent them back to zero.

What’s left are the few that got lucky, or were built well enough to never need a reset. Give it a few more years and the list may shrink again.

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