Over the past year, Microsoft Teams town hall has made significant strides, continuing to evolve as a platform for scalable digital and hybrid events. It now provides enhanced production controls and richer attendee experiences. Whether you’re hosting a company-wide all hands, a hybrid town hall from your headquarters, or a large presentation for clients, Teams town hall provides a unified, professional solution that keeps everyone engaged and connected, supporting up to 100,000 simultaneous attendees.
If you are new to town hall or are considering consolidating your communication on Teams to host scalable events, we’d like to share the latest progress and key features that make town hall a great choice for large-scale events with enhanced customer experiences.
Scalable event experience in Teams Rooms - Hybrid events made easy
Modern events often combine an in-person audience with remote participants. Teams town hall now fully supports these co-located experiences through seamless integration with Teams Rooms systems. When using Teams Rooms on Windows, a conference room system assigned as a presenter can join the event in presenter mode, with the front-of-room display defaulting to the attendee view. From the console, presenters maintain complete control over what appears on screen, including access to the green room and off-stage management. They can also switch the front-of-room display to presenter view without affecting what remote attendees see. The result is a smoother, more coordinated hybrid experience—transforming the on-site AV setup into a powerful production studio.
In addition to this new capability for Teams Rooms on Windows, town hall is now supported for Teams Rooms on Android. These systems can now join a town hall as an attendee, allowing a group to participate together in-person with a Teams Room on Android device.
Ultra-low latency (ULL) streaming – Real-time engagement
Historically, large broadcast-style events had a significant delay of around 20–30 seconds for attendees. Town hall now reduces that delay with ultra-low latency (ULL) streaming for Teams Premium users. When enabled, ULL streaming dramatically reduces the delay for attendees watching the live stream to less than five seconds. This means your audience hears and sees the presenters in near real-time allowing more natural engagement. . This low-latency stream is auto-activated for town halls organized with a Teams Premium license, and it works with Microsoft’s eCDN solutions to scale securely for up to 20,000 concurrent event attendees.
1080p full HD video quality – Crisp, professional broadcasts
Visual clarity is key to professional, high-quality event production. Town hall now supports 1080p full HD video for live event streams, a significant improvement from the former 720p limit. With 1080p, your town hall comes through with sharper, more detailed video meaning faces, text, and visuals are crystal clear for every attendee. This professional, studio-quality look helps land your message with a more engaging experience that holds audience attention. This feature enables 1080p resolution for up to 20,000 concurrent event attendees. This feature is currently in private preview, but will soon be generally available, and requires a Teams Premium license to enable.
Event layouts & “Manage What Attendees See” – Polished production control
Town hall gives organizers and presenters with Teams Premium powerful event layout control to craft a dynamic viewing experience for event attendees. Using the “Manage What Attendees See” feature, you can act as a producer in real-time, deciding who and what appears on the screen at any time. For example, you might start with a full-slide view during a critical data presentation, then switch to a side-by-side layout showing the presenter’s video alongside the slides for commentary.
Town hall allows up to seven presenters to be shown simultaneously alongside shared content, an improvement over previous limits, so a whole panel can appear with the presentation media at once. Attendees stay focused on the content you want to highlight, and you can seamlessly transition between layouts (slides, speaker gallery, demos, etc.) to keep the presentation engaging and ensure that presenters land their key messages with the right information for attendees.
Screen sharing navigation – No need to say ‘next slide’
During large events it’s common for multiple presenters to speak to the same presentation. Now presenters can share control of their slides with up to 20 other presenters at the same time, removing the need to hand off control between sections and providing seamless navigation of the slides throughout the presentation. Control is delegated by the user sharing their screen and can be adjusted at any point of your event.
Live polls – Real-time audience engagement
Keeping large audiences engaged can be challenging, but town hall now includes integrated polls to allow participants to stay involved. Organizers with Teams Premium can create and launch polls during the event, and results can be shared instantly with everyone. This capability transforms a one-way broadcast into a two-way conversation. For attendees, polls provide a quick and easy way to participate and contribute. For presenters, polls offer immediate feedback that can help tailor the live discussion. This can result in a more attentive audience, new opportunities for communication, and moments of collective participation.
Raise Hands – Inclusive Q&A
Town hall is designed to scale to tens of thousands of viewers, but we haven’t forgotten the importance of letting individual voices be heard. We’re excited to bring the raise hand feature to town hall. When an audience member raises their hand, organizers and presenters are notified and can choose to bring that attendee on screen to ask a question or share a comment, with full audio and video. This is a game-changer for live Q&A sessions. Instead of relying solely on typed Q&A or pre-submitted questions, you can invite attendees to actively participate in the discussion. For event organizers, this feature means you can foster authentic, live interaction, even when presenting at scale.
Town hall Graph API – Greater control and customization
Microsoft Graph APIs empower organizations to integrate Teams town hall with the internal platforms and workflows they are already using. These APIs enable organizations to automate the entire event lifecycle, by creating, publishing, and canceling town halls directly from their own systems, eliminating manual steps and reducing operational overhead. Organizations can use Graph APIs to suppress default Teams notification emails and instead trigger their own internal email communications, ensuring consistent user experiences. An additional recent enhancement is resource-specific consent (RSC), which allows apps to request permissions scoped to a specific town hall (or webinar) rather than requiring global admin rights. This improves security, simplifies consent processes, and enables developers to build integrations that respect organizational boundaries, all while ensuring compliance and scalability for enterprise events.
Teams town hall has evolved into a comprehensive platform that raises the bar for virtual and hybrid events. From ultra-low latency streaming and HD video that make your broadcast feel crisp and professional, to interactive features like polls and raise hands that turn passive viewers into active participants, town hall is built to engage audiences at scale. Town hall helps mitigate the challenges of hybrid work and delivers tools for co-located experiences and Teams Rooms system integration so you can connect with people across offices and geographies in one seamless event. All of these innovations are available to use today as part of the current town hall experience. Try them out to create more impactful, inclusive events for your audiences.
- Learn more about Teams Town hall and what is coming next: Teams Town hall adoption
- Hear more from our experts on how to execute successful town halls at scale: Customer Hub
- Read more about our best practices for hosting Town hall events in Teams Rooms: Teams town hall in Teams Rooms best practices
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