What it does

A town hall is a Teams event "optimized for large audience" — presenters and organisers on stage, attendees view-only with Q&A, delivered with a small broadcast delay and eCDN support. It's the replacement for Teams live events, which retired on 30 June 2026.

Key facts

• Teams live events retired on 30 June 2026. Live events scheduled before that date are supported until 28 February 2027. Both production methods (Teams and external encoder) retire.
• Who can schedule town halls is controlled by the Teams events policy: Set-CsTeamsEventsPolicy -AllowTownhalls Enabled|Disabled (default Enabled). Admin center path: Meetings > Events policies.
• Who can attend is -TownhallEventAttendeeAccess with Everyone (default) or EveryoneInOrganizationAndGuests.
• Capacity with Teams Enterprise: up to 10,000 attendees, view-only with Q&A. The Attendee Capacity Pack add-on takes events up to 100,000. Microsoft recommends Teams Events Services for events over 20,000.
• Any event over 1,000 attendees has "Optimize for large audience" forced on; it then uses the town hall policy settings. Under 1,000 the toggle is off by default.
• Attendees can't use mic or camera on demand, get a slight delay with pause and rewind, and there's no lobby, no PowerPoint Live, no Whiteboard and no breakout rooms.
• Microsoft eCDN is on by default for large-audience events; certified partners Hive, Kollective and Ramp can be selected instead. Without eCDN plan for about 2 Mbps per viewer (3 Mbps for 1080p).
• RTMP-In and SRT-In from external encoders are controlled in the events policy; RTMP-Out (Custom Streaming app) is controlled in the meeting policy.
• Event recordings expire after 30 days by default (extendable to 90). Transcription for town halls is -TranscriptionForTownhall on the events policy (enabled by default).
• Up to 10 co-organisers and up to 100 presenters. Maximum event duration is 30 hours.
• Organisations in China can't create large-audience events.
• As of 1 April 2026 some features previously exclusive to Teams Premium moved into Teams Enterprise; Premium still carries branding, advanced protection and intelligence features. Check the current meetings and events feature comparison before telling a client which tier they need.

When to use / skip

Use a town hall for one-to-many broadcasts — CEO all-hands, quarterly results, company announcements — where the audience watches and asks questions. Anything over 1,000 people is a town hall whether the organiser likes it or not.

Skip it when the audience needs to talk. For training sessions, workshops and interactive customer sessions up to 1,000, use a webinar or a normal meeting with registration; you keep mics, cameras, breakout rooms and the lobby. Equally, don't book a town hall for a 60-person team update just because it's labelled an "all-hands" — the delay and lack of interaction make it worse, not better.

If the client still has recurring live events in the calendar, the migration is overdue. Anything booked before 30 June 2026 runs until February 2027, then stops.

Configuration decisions

• Who can schedule town halls — everyone, or a comms/events team via a custom events policy assigned by group.
• Whether town halls can be public (Everyone) or org-and-guests only.
• Which eCDN — Microsoft eCDN or an existing Hive/Kollective/Ramp contract the client already pays for.
• Whether producers will use external encoders (RTMP-In/SRT-In) for professional AV, and who's allowed to.
• Whether the Attendee Capacity Pack is needed, or whether the audience realistically stays under 10,000.
• Recording retention — whether the 30-day event default is enough or needs extending to 90.

Gotchas

• Live events are retired, but old scheduled events can still run until 28 February 2027. Find them with the client before they fail on the day.
• Town halls have no lobby. Attendee access is controlled by who the event is open to, not by admission on the day.
• External presenters can't dial in. Give them the unique presenter link and get them on a laptop.
• VPN without split tunnelling for media will sink a large town hall. Fix the VPN before blaming eCDN.
• Without eCDN, a few hundred people in one office watching at 2 Mbps each will saturate a modest WAN link. Do the maths per site.
• Licence entitlements shifted on 1 April 2026. Old blog posts and your own previous decks may describe the wrong Premium boundary.

Consultant notes

• Run a silent test and a full dry run with eCDN on, from the client's real network, before the first big event.
• Treat the comms team as the product owner. Lock scheduling to them and give everyone else webinars and meetings.
• Pull the CQD "Teams Events Overview" and "Event Health Details" reports after the first few events so you have evidence of quality, not anecdotes.
• Encourage organisers to export Q&A to CSV afterwards — leadership always asks "what did people ask?" a week later.
• If an existing eCDN partner contract is up for renewal, test Microsoft eCDN first; it's on by default and may be enough.

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Worth revisiting after the 28 February 2027 live events cut-off, or when Microsoft next moves features between Teams Enterprise and Premium