It started with a like button

In mid-April 2026, a 23-year-old from Warsaw named Patryk Garkowski — known online as Łatwogang — made a deceptively simple promise: for every like on his TikTok video, he would listen to a song for one second on a live stream. The video received over 767,000 likes. The math was absurd. The result was historic.

Over nine consecutive days, Łatwogang broadcast live on YouTube, playing the same track on loop: Ciągle tutaj jestem (diss na raka) — “I’m Still Here (A Diss Track Against Cancer)” — recorded by rapper Bedoes 2115 and Maja Mecan, an 11-year-old from Oława who has been battling acute myeloid leukemia for nearly three years. What began as an online challenge quietly became something else entirely: a national reckoning with grief, generosity, and what the internet, at its best, is actually capable of.

When the stream ended on April 26, 2026, it had raised over 250 million złoty for the Cancer Fighters Foundation, with over 1.45 million people watching simultaneously. The Guinness World Record for the largest charity livestream in history now belongs to Warsaw.

A Song That Started It All

The foundation of the entire campaign was a three-minute track. Maja Mecan, eleven years old and mid-treatment, recorded Ciągle tutaj jestem with rapper Bedoes 2115 — a defiant, tender song about refusing to be beaten by illness. All royalties went directly to the Cancer Fighters Foundation, which has supported people with cancer across Poland since 2015. The song went viral almost immediately.

Łatwogang heard it, and made his move. His TikTok announcement was casual, even tongue-in-cheek — the kind of challenge format his audience knew well. But the response was anything but casual. Likes poured in by the hundreds of thousands. The original fundraising goal was 500,000 złoty. It fell within hours.

Nine Days in a Warsaw Apartment

From April 17, the stream ran without interruption from a small studio in Warsaw. The format was deliberately stripped back — one man, one song, one cause — but the cast that rotated through was anything but small. Football icon Robert Lewandowski appeared and donated one million złoty alongside his wife Anna Lewandowska. Singer Doda called Magda Gessler live on air and ended a years-long public feud. Sylwester Wardęga reconciled with Wersow and Friz, closing what had been one of the longest-running disputes in the Polish creator world. Katarzyna Nosowska, Maffashion, and Edyta Pazura shaved their heads on camera in solidarity with children undergoing chemotherapy.

The stream was, at various points, a concert, a talk show, a confessional, and a telethon. It was also, quietly, a portrait of a country choosing to show up.

Breaking the Record

The previous Guinness World Record for the most money raised during a single charity livestream had been held by MrBeast, who raised $12 million in August 2025 for clean water access. Łatwogang passed that figure before the end of his first week. By the final day, the counter had long stopped feeling real to many watching it.

At peak, over 1.5 million people were watching simultaneously — a number that rivals major televised national events. The Guinness World Record was confirmed, making this not just the biggest charity stream in Polish history, but in the history of the internet.

What the Money Means

Every złoty raised goes directly to the Cancer Fighters Foundation, with no commission taken by any platform. The foundation supports children with cancer and their families across Poland — covering treatment costs, rehabilitation, and daily care that the public healthcare system cannot always provide. For context, Poland’s largest annual charity event, the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, raised 263 million złoty across the entire country in January 2026. Łatwogang came close to matching that — alone, in nine days, from one apartment in Warsaw.

The Cancer Fighters Foundation has stated that funds will be directed first to patients in the most immediate need.

Why It Matters Beyond the Numbers

There is a version of this story that is simply about metrics — peak viewers, złoty raised, records broken. But that version misses what made nine million Poles stop scrolling and start watching.

At the centre of it was Maja. Not an abstract cause, not a campaign logo, but a child who wrote a song about still being here. That specificity — one girl, one song, one disease — gave the entire campaign its emotional gravity. Łatwogang understood, perhaps instinctively, that people don’t donate to statistics. They donate to stories.

Warsaw has long punched above its weight culturally — in music, in nightlife, in resilience. This felt like another chapter of the same story. A 23-year-old with a laptop and a cause, in a city that knows something about refusing to be broken.

The stream is over. The donations are still open at cancerfighters.pl.

How Łatwogang’s Nine-Day Stream Changed The Internet

It started with a like button

A Song That Started It All

Nine Days in a Warsaw Apartment

Breaking the Record

What the Money Means

Why It Matters Beyond the Numbers

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