Various methods and systems are provided for latency aware priority based decoding. In one embodiment, among others, a method includes providing coded frames of a first input stream to a multiple channel (multi-channel) decoder for decoding. A second input stream is obtained and a latency priority associated with the second input stream is determined. Coded frames from the first and second input streams are provided to the multi-channel decoder for decoding in an order based upon the latency priorities associated with the first and second input streams. In another embodiment, a multi-channel decoding system includes a multi-channel decoder configured to decode coded frames and a decoder input scheduler configured to provide coded frames from a plurality of input streams to the multi-channel decoder for decoding. The coded frames are provided to the multi-channel decoder in an order based at least in part upon latency priorities associated with the input streams.