Explore webinars and town halls with Teams Premium
Important
Teams live events will retire in July 2026. Events that have already been scheduled will be supported through February 28, 2027. We recommend that you upgrade to Teams town hall to take advantage of the improved experience and features for digital and hybrid events at scale.
Town halls
Town halls are generally best for situations where a limited number of presenters are presenting to a large group of attendees and direct interaction via chat or voice conversation isn't needed. For these event formats, attendees don't use their cameras and mics, but instead use Q&A to engage with presenters and organizers.
Note
As of April 1, 2026, some town hall features previously available only with Teams Premium are now included with Teams Enterprise. Organizations can scale events up to 100,000 attendees with Attendee Capacity Packs.
| Capability | Town halls | Premium town halls |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcast capacity | 10k | 20k |
| Attendee reporting | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| eCDN | 3rd and 1st party | 1st party |
| Duration | 30 hours | 30 hours |
| RTMP-in | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Producer UX | Manage what attendees see | Manage what attendees see |
| Default audio and video off | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Layouts | Focused curated view | Focused curated view |
| Green room | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| External presenters | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Manage what attendees see | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| AI generated captions | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Q&A capacity | 10k | 20k |
| VOD | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Organizer level real time monitoring | ✖️ | ✔️ |
| Essential emails | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Email editing | ✖️ | ✔️ |
Webinars
Webinars are structured meetings where presenters and participants have clear roles. A key difference between webinars and Teams meetings is that webinars support robust registration management, a customizable event and registration site, and event-oriented default meeting options.
Teams Premium offers additional webinar functionality through the Teams Premium subscription. The breakdown of features is highlighted in the following table:
| Feature name | Webinar features | Premium webinar features |
|---|---|---|
| Allow registered users to bypass the lobby | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Assign a coorganizer | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Limit the number of people who can register | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Require attendees to register | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Set up a green room for webinar presenters | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Turn on Q&A for webinars with up to 1,000 attendees | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| View attendance reports | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| External presenters | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Create a webinar wait list | ✔️ | |
| Limit the day and time when people can register | ✔️ | |
| Manage attendees’ view | ✔️ | |
| Manually approve registrants | ✔️ | |
| Send reminder emails to registrants | ✔️ | |
| Use RTMP-In for webinars | ✔️ |
Best practices for large meetings and events
This section provides guidance for admins, along with tips that admins can share with their presenters and organizers.
To run a successful event, follow the practices outlined below:
For the best experience in large meetings, webinars, and town halls, Microsoft recommends using the latest version of the Teams desktop client or Teams mobile clients.
Ensure that all Microsoft Network Connectivity Principles have been followed both on-premises and for remote users. The network connectivity principles apply to meetings, webinars, and town halls.
Use real-time data telemetry to monitor the event and identify any possible issues and its source.
Designate meeting monitors to analyze telemetry for users facing poor experience caused by metrics exceeding thresholds.
Set meeting monitors as presenters to disable rogue video streams, mute accidental live mics, and remove attendees if needed.