Discord’s Stage Channels just got a major upgrade

Discord‘s Stage Channels are no longer audio-only.

First launched in 2021 as a clear competitor for services like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, Stage Channels allow up to 1,000 Discord users to congregate in one channel, with a few users in speaking/presenting roles and the vast majority in perma-muted listening roles.

According to Discord, “millions” of Stage Channels have been created since launch, with users utilizing them “to come together and hold conversations, record podcasts, [and] host community AMAs and interviews with creators.”

But, through all that, Stage Channels have been pretty limited in functionality.

Starting today, though, all Stage Channels now have video presenting, screen-sharing, and text chat.

If you’re thinking, “Doesn’t Discord already do that?”–well, yes. These features are already available in other areas of Discord, like direct messages and private servers; they’ve just been wrapped into Stage Channels with some relevant controls for speaker/listener roles.

There is a slight caveat: These functionalities are only available to Stage Channels with 50 or fewer participants, including presenters and audience members. (Servers that have been boosted to Tier 2 or Tier 3 can use them in Stage Channels with 150 and 300 participants, respectively.) Once the cap limit is hit, no more participants will be allowed to join the Stage Channel.

“With the introduction of video, screen share and text chat support, Stage channels will help bring people together better than ever, no matter if you’re a proud performer using video on-stage or a more reserved audience member whose gained just a little extra confidence to peek out and say ‘hi’ in text chat,” Discord said in a blog post about the update.

You can read more about accessing Stage Channels and using the new functionalities here.