Plan for live events in Microsoft Teams
Note
We're currently still supporting live events. While we still recommend you to upgrade to Teams town halls to take advantage of new features and experiences, your users can continue to schedule events. For more information, see Updates for Town Hall in Microsoft Teams and Teams Live Events.
When you're planning Teams live events to hold large meetings in your organization, there are several factors that you need to consider before starting the setup.
Note
For details about Teams live events on different platforms, see Teams features by platform. See prepare your organization to learn about bandwidth requirements for Teams live events.
The Teams client doesn't support Teams live events on Surface hub devices. Users can only join the events as viewers using the Edge web browser on their Surface hub devices.
Who can attend, create, and schedule live events
Anyone can attend a live event without a license. For details, see Admin quick start - Meetings and live events.
Prerequisites
The following prerequisites are required for users to schedule a Teams live event.
Licensing
You must assign these licenses to allow users in your org to organize, produce, or present a Teams live event:
- To organize: A Microsoft or Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, or E5 license, [or] a Microsoft or Office 365 Education A3 or A5 license.
- To produce or present: A Microsoft or Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3 or E5 license, [or] a Microsoft or Office 365 Education A1, A3, or A5 license. The exception to this requirement is guests can present without a license if the other criteria for guests in the Allow guests to present section are met.
- A Microsoft Teams license - this license is included in the licenses listed in the first and second bullets.
Note
Currently, Microsoft 365 Small Business plans can't create and hold Teams live events.
To participate in a live event as an authenticated user, a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license is required. This requirement depends on the production method used:
- For events produced in Teams or using a Teams Powered Encoder The user must be assigned a Teams license.
Note
Teams live events is now available for US Government Cloud Community (GCC) organizations.
For more information about licensing, see Microsoft Teams add-on licensing.
Policies
For the full live event experience, users must have:
- Private meeting scheduling in Teams enabled (The CsTeamsMeetingPolicy
-AllowPrivateMeetingSchedulingparameter = True). - Video sharing enabled in Teams meetings (The CsTeamsMeetingPolicy
-AllowIPVideoparameter = True). - Screen sharing enabled in Teams meetings (The CsTeamsMeetingPolicy
-ScreenSharingModeparameter = EntireScreen). - Live event scheduling in Teams enabled (The CsTeamsMeetingBroadcastPolicy
-AllowBroadcastSchedulingparameter = True). - Coexistence mode configured to be able to schedule Teams meetings (Islands, Meeting First, or Teams Only).
Important
Non-authenticated anonymous users can't be invited as producers or presenters in Teams live events.
Allow guests to present
For a guest to present in a live event, do the following tasks:
- Add the user as a guest to a team.
- Have the user accept the guest invitation and join the team.
- Schedule the live event and add the guest to your event group.
As a best practice, we recommend that you create a channel for producers and presenters of the live event so they can chat and share information before the event. Guests who don't have Microsoft 365 credentials can't see the Calendar in Teams. To make it easy for them to join the event, producers can post the event link to the channel. Presenters can then open Teams, go to the channel, and then select the link to join the event.
Who can watch live events
| Attendee visibility | Teams production | External app or device production | Teams Powered Encoder |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public (anonymous users) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Guests | Yes1 | No | Yes |
| People in external access trusted organizations | Yes1 | No | Yes |
| Everyone in the organization | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Specific groups or people | Yes | Yes | Yes |
1 Can only be invited through People & Group.
Teams live events
The following table highlights core capabilities and features offered in live events
Important
Microsoft 365 live event limit increases
To continue supporting our customers' needs, we will extend temporary limit increases for live events until further notice, including:
- Event support for up to 20,000 attendees
- 50 events can be hosted simultaneously across a tenant
- Event duration of 16 hours per broadcast
Additionally, live events with up to 100,000 attendees can be planned through the Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program. The team will assess each request and work with you to determine options that may be available. To learn more, see Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program.
| Capability | Events produced in Teams | Events produced in external app or device |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum audience size | 10,000 attendees1 | 10,000 attendees1 |
| Maximum duration of live event | four hours | four hours |
| Maximum number of presenters and producers in a live event | 10 2 | 10 2 |
| Maximum number of concurrent live events per Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization | 15 | 15 |
| Live event creation | Teams, Viva Engage via Teams | Teams, Viva Engage via Teams, Stream |
| Audience engagement – Viva Engage | ✔ (integrated experience) | ✔ (integrated experience) |
| Audience engagement – Moderated Q & A | ✔ | ✔ |
| Producer client on Windows | ✔ (Teams) | ✔ (Stream, Teams via Stream Embed) |
| Producer client on Mac | ✔ (Teams) | ✔ (Stream, Teams via Stream Embed) |
| Attendee count in Producer UI | ✔ (Teams) | ✔ (Stream, Teams via Stream Embed) |
| Allows multiple presenters | ✔ (Teams) | N/A |
| Invite a presenter during the meeting | ❌ | N/A |
| Presenter join on Web and Mobile | ❌ | N/A |
| External access & guest presenters/attendees | ✔ (Teams) | N/A |
| Presenter – PSTN access | ✔ (Teams) | N/A |
| Present a screen | ✔ (Teams) | N/A |
| Share system audio on Windows (available only when screen sharing) | ✔ (Teams) | ✔ |
| Present a PowerPoint (PPT sharing) | ❌ (mitigated via screen sharing) | N/A |
| Cloud based meeting recording | ✔ | ✔ |
| Auto publish recording to Stream | ❌ | ✔ |
| Live captions and subtitles | ✔ | ❌ |
| Captions in live event recordings | ✔ | ✔ |
| Attendee DVR controls (pause, rewind) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Microsoft eCDN | ✔ | ✔ |
| Partner eCDN Support | ✔ (Hive, Kollective, Ramp, Riverbed) | ✔ (Hive, Kollective, Ramp, Riverbed) |
| Post-broadcast attendance report for Producers | ✔ | ❌ |
| Audience Sentiment Analysis – Live voting & polls | ❌ | ❌ |
1 The limits that are set might be changed. Check Limits and specifications for Teams.
2 You can have up to 100 presenters and producers in a live event, but only the last 10 who spoke show up in the list.
Regional availability
You can use Teams live events in multiple regions across the world. The following information shows availability for event team members and attendees.
Important
The region for the event is automatically selected depending on the organizer and the Microsoft 365 tenant location.
Live events are available in the following regional data centers
- North America
- Central America
- South America
- Asia Pacific
- Europe/Africa
Data location for the following countries/regions is supported
- Australia
- Brazil
- Canada
- France
- Germany
- India
- Japan
- Norway
- Poland
- Singapore
- South Africa
- South Korea
- Switzerland
- UAE
- United Kingdom
Exclusions and considerations
- Data location: Teams data locations, outside of the ones listed, aren't currently supported.
Next steps
Go to Set up for Teams live events.