In September 2023, Microsoft Teams introduced Town halls as a new solution for one-to-many communications, where presenters, organizers, and co-organizers lead the presentation. At the time of the announcement, Microsoft mentioned that its existing Teams Live Events solution, which served the same purpose, would be discontinued in favor of Town halls.
Based on customer feedback, Microsoft later announced that it would not retire Teams Live Events on September 30, 2024, as previously announced. Microsoft published the following reason for this move:
"We"ve spoken with customers and understand how important it is to ensure a smooth transition to Town hall. We are committed to making it as easy and beneficial as possible for customers to experiment, adopt, and implement Town hall as their destination for large-scale digital events, as well as allow customers to upgrade from Live Events to Town hall on their own schedule."
Since last year, Microsoft has been making several improvements to the Town hall feature. Until now, Teams Town halls had a limitation of 20,000 attendees for a single event. Microsoft recently updated its roadmap page to state that organizers of Town hall instances can now reach wider audiences with an expansion to a maximum of 50,000 simultaneous attendees. This expansion will go live in December this year on the web, desktop, and Mac.
Microsoft specifically mentioned that the quality and stability of Town halls up to this new 50,000 limit will remain constant, providing a high-quality and reliable experience for participants. To ensure quality for events with more than 20,000 concurrent attendees, Microsoft will disable some interactivity features for all attendees.
Microsoft also noted that organizations that need support for audiences of up to 50,000 concurrent attendees can reach out to the Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program (LEAP) for assistance (Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program – Microsoft Adoption). The Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program feature is available for organizations with an active Teams Premium license.
By increasing the capacity of Town halls, Microsoft empowers organizations to connect with larger audiences while maintaining a high-quality experience.