The final marathon started on Friday, September 4, with roughly 300 affiliated creators streaming from Montpellier and remotely. More than 50 hours of broadcasts are scheduled before the event closes on Sunday.
It is Z Event's tenth edition and, by choice, its last.
The beneficiary list is effectively a retrospective
All 22 charities previously supported by Z Event are returning for the farewell. They span humanitarian aid, health, social causes, human rights and environmental protection, including Médecins Sans Frontières, the French Red Cross, Action Against Hunger, Amnesty International, WWF France, LPO, Secours populaire and the French League Against Cancer.
Donations are collected through the Fondation de France and redistributed among the beneficiaries.
It gives the anniversary an unusually practical form. Instead of merely celebrating old editions, the final fundraiser directly reconnects with the organizations that defined them.
Z Event learned to turn internet culture into fundraising mechanics
Its most recognizable invention was not technically new at all. Fundraising targets have existed forever. Z Event adapted them to Twitch communities through donation goals: hit a number, make the creator do the promised thing.
That promise could be a special stream, a ridiculous challenge, a major production, a collaboration or something the streamer would clearly prefer everyone to forget by Sunday morning.
The mechanism linked a serious action to immediate entertainment. Viewers could see both the charity counter and the consequence of pushing it higher. Over repeated editions, that became part of the shared vocabulary of French streaming rather than a novelty attached to one weekend.
A concert showed how far the event had moved beyond a computer screen
The 2026 edition opened on September 3 with a large concert at Montpellier's Sud de France Arena. GIMS withdrew for health reasons shortly before the show, Yamê joined the lineup, and Bigflo & Oli extended their set alongside Gazo and Orchestre Curieux.
The fundraiser had reached €500,000 by the end of the concert, before the main creator streams began.
The cultural footprint is larger than the record
Z Event had already raised more than €55 million before this weekend. The 2025 edition alone exceeded €16 million.
Those totals are the easiest part of the story to measure. The harder part is the normalization of creators as large-scale community organizers. Z Event repeatedly put charities in front of audiences assembled primarily around gaming, entertainment and personalities rather than institutional campaigning.
It also made the collision between online and offline culture look normal: Twitch channels became stages, charity representatives became guests, internet jokes became fundraising triggers and a gathering of streamers eventually filled major venues in Montpellier.
Ending before the format runs out of energy
When ZeratoR announced the final edition in May, he framed the decision as a choice to complete the story after ten editions and make room for others. That makes the ending unusual.
There is no obvious collapse to explain. The previous edition set another enormous fundraising total, and hundreds of creators are involved again in 2026.
The final amount will be announced when the marathon closes. For once, there is no next Z Event waiting behind it.
