How to create a Telegram community: link groups, channels and bots, set who sees each chat and keep it posting
How to create a Telegram community step by step: link groups, channels and bots, pick visible or hidden chats, limit who adds chats and invite members.
Telegram channels & groupsBy Dariusz KrasinskiPublished 11 min read
In short
- A Telegram community links groups, channels and bots, each added by its owner, and members of any one chat can see the visible ones and join or ask to join them.
- Each chat is Visible or Hidden, and the apps warn you can’t change that later, so decide before you add it.
- There is no community-wide invite link as of October 2026: share one entry chat, or a shareable folder.
Here is how to create a Telegram community: open a group, channel or bot you own, go to Edit (Manage on Desktop), choose Add Group to a Community, then Create Community, name it and make the chat Visible or Hidden. Telegram Communities, launched on 14 July 2026, link groups, channels and bots so members can find each other’s chats.
What is a Telegram community?
A Telegram community is a named set of linked groups, channels and bots whose members can see the community’s visible chats and join them, or ask to join, without an invite link. Telegram launched Communities on 14 July 2026, and its launch post put it this way:
Several groups, channels, and bots can now be linked together into communities around a shared topic. Community members can see its other chats and join them instantly.
The Bot API changelog is more precise: a community is “several supergroups, channels, and bots linked together around a shared topic or audience”. Each chat stays a separate group or channel with its own members and admins. What the community adds is a shared directory, with headings such as Chats you are in, Chats you can join and Chats you can request to join in Telegram for Android. Members can turn on Show as One Chat to “group all community chats into one item in the chat list”, as all three official apps put it, and the launch post says the grouped community “expands when you open it”.
Inside a community, a group is still for conversation among its members, and a channel is still “a tool for broadcasting messages to large audiences”, as Telegram’s FAQ puts it; the guide to Telegram groups vs channels compares the two in detail. If you were looking for a way to put several channels and groups under one name, this is it: create a community and add each chat to it.
How to create a Telegram community, step by step
You create a community from a group, channel or bot you own: the option sits on its edit screen, and that chat becomes the community’s first member. The menu names below come from the official Android, iPhone and Desktop apps’ source code as of 11 October 2026; the iPhone app uses the same labels for the community options.
Start from a chat you own
Only the chat’s owner sees the option: the Android and Desktop apps check for the creator status they label Owner, which also covers a chat whose ownership was transferred to you. Telegram Desktop offers it in supergroups, channels and your own bots, and the Android app turns a basic group into a supergroup as part of the process. Groups also upgrade by themselves at 200 members.
Open the edit screen
On Android, open the chat’s profile and tap Edit; on Desktop, choose Manage group, Manage Channel or Manage Bot. Tap Add Group to a Community (or Add Channel to a Community, or Add Bot to a Community).
Choose Create Community
Pick Create Community. Communities you already belong to are listed underneath, under Add to an existing community.
Name the community
Type a Community Name. Telegram Desktop lets you add a photo on the same screen, and the community’s settings let you change the name and photo later.
Choose Visible or Hidden
Under Chat visibility, Visible means “Anyone in the community will be able to see this chat”, and Hidden means “Only invited members and community admins will see this chat.” All three apps warn: “You won’t be able to change this later.”
Check the new community
Telegram Desktop confirms with “Community created.” From then on, adding or removing a chat leaves a service message in that chat, such as “… added this group to the … community.”
Decide visibility before you link a chat
If a chat might ever hold private material, such as paid content or staff discussion, add it as Hidden: the choice can’t be changed afterwards.
How do you add channels, groups and bots to a community?
Add a chat from the community itself with Add a Chat to Community, or from the chat’s edit screen with Add to an existing community; either way, you can only add chats and bots you own. Telegram Desktop’s list shows supergroups you created that aren’t in a community yet, plus your eligible channels and bots, and the same screen has Create a New Chat for starting a fresh group or channel inside the community.
A chat belongs to one community at a time: once it is linked, its edit screen offers only Remove Group from Community (or Channel, or Bot) instead of the add option. And a partner’s channel can join your community only if its owner adds it, or suggests it, from their side.
- Size limit. When a community is full, Telegram Desktop says “Limit of … chats reached” and the iPhone app says it “has reached the maximum number of chats.” Desktop also has a separate limit for bots and reads both numbers from Telegram’s server configuration; Telegram doesn’t publish them.
- Removing a chat detaches it from the community; the group or channel itself isn’t deleted.
- Deleting the community “will detach all its chats”, in Telegram Desktop’s words, rather than deleting them.
- Bots are added from their own edit screen with Add Bot to a Community; once a bot is in, “community members will be able to see and use” it, in Telegram’s words. Like any chat, a bot added by a member waits for approval when only admins may add chats.
Visible or hidden: which should each chat be?
Make a chat Visible when any community member may find and join it, and Hidden when only people you invite should know it is there. A member of any chat in the community can join a visible chat in a tap, or send a join request if that chat approves new members. If someone who hasn’t been invited opens a hidden chat from the community’s list, the app says “You can’t join or view this group until an admin invites you.”
The layout below is a suggestion for a typical brand, course or project community, not a Telegram rule:
| Chat | Visibility | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Announcements channel | Visible | It is the front door, so every member should be able to find it. |
| Main discussion group | Visible | Subscribers of the channel can join it in a tap, with no extra link. |
| Language or regional groups | Visible | Members pick the ones that suit them. |
| Paid or members-only group | Hidden | Only people you invite see it, so your payment or approval process stays the way in. |
| Moderators’ room | Hidden | Staff discussion stays out of sight of members. |
| Help or support bot | Visible | Community members can see and use it once it is in the community. |
Who can add chats, and what can community admins do?
By default any member can add their own groups and channels to a community; set Who can add chats to Only admins and members’ chats arrive as Pending Requests instead. Telegram’s launch post calls communities “collaborative by default” and says that when adding chats is limited, “you will see them as suggestions instead.” Admins can add or decline each suggestion, or use Add All and Decline All.
Our advice: switch to Only admins before you promote the community widely. Telegram doesn’t warn about this, but with All members anyone in the community could add a chat with a name like yours, which suits impersonators; the guide to setting up a community so clones are easy to spot covers the other defences.
Community admins and community-wide bans
Community admins are separate from each chat’s admins, and you promote them with Make Community Admin (the Android and Desktop wording). In those two apps their rights are Edit Community Name, Edit Group List and Ban Members; the iPhone app calls the first two Edit Community Info and Edit Chat List, and adds Add Community Admins. Ban from the Community removes the person from the community’s chats, and the apps show how many. If that member added chats of their own, Telegram Desktop warns that the ban “will also remove” those chats from the community, so check before you confirm.
Greeting newcomers is still done chat by chat: a welcome message belongs to one group or channel, and the welcome message guide shows how to set one in each entry chat.
Is there a link to share a Telegram community?
No: as of 11 October 2026 there is no community-wide invite link, so you share one chat’s link and members find the rest from inside. Telegram hasn’t announced one, and the interface text of the Android, iPhone and Desktop apps has no option to create one, only ways to view or open the community.
- Pick an entry chat. Usually the main channel or the main group, set to Visible. Share its public @username or an invite link wherever you promote the community.
- Let members fan out. Once someone joins a chat in the community, they can see its visible chats and join them without a separate link.
- See where people came from. When someone joins a group from the community, the group shows “… joined the group via the … community”, and since Bot API 10.3 of 24 August 2026, bots receive the same event as
CommunityChatJoined.
If you need one link that puts people in several chats at once, use a shareable chat folder instead. Telegram’s folder announcement says: “With one tap, they will add the folder and instantly join all its chats.” A folder link can include public chats and chats where you have the admin right to add people, though Telegram Desktop adds that chats with bots can’t be shared. Create one under Settings > Chat Folders. You can use both: a folder link for the chats everyone should join, and the community for the rest.
Communities, folders or topics: which do you need?
Use a community to link separate chats that members discover inside Telegram, a shareable folder when one link should join several chats at once, and topics when one group needs separate threads. Telegram’s topics announcement says any group, “regardless of their size”, can turn them on.
| Question | Community | Shareable folder | Topics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who sets it up | The owner of a group, channel or bot, from its edit screen | Any user, under Settings > Chat Folders | A group’s admins, in Group Settings |
| What it holds | Supergroups, channels and bots | Public chats and chats where you may add people, but no chats with bots | Threads inside one group |
| One link joins everything | No | Yes | Not needed: it is one group |
| Members and admins | Each chat keeps its own, plus community admins | Each chat keeps its own | One membership and one set of admins |
| History and notifications | Separate in each chat | Separate in each chat | Each topic has its own history, shared media and notification settings |
| Best for | A family of chats members browse and join | Bringing people into a fixed set of chats | One busy group with many subjects |
How do you keep every chat in a community posting?
Telegram describes no way to post to every chat in a community at once, so each group and channel needs its own messages; the guide to sending one message to several Telegram groups covers the native and scheduled ways to do it. If the community’s main channel is your own, a forwarding rule in Dripl can copy each new post to the other groups and channels you add, as new messages from one account that reads the channel about every 15 seconds and can post in every chat; formatting such as bold text or text links is dropped, and an album arrives as separate posts. Dripl has no Communities support, so you add each chat as its own destination; when you first turn a rule on it also copies up to 25 of the channel’s latest posts, and posts from a channel with content protection turned on are skipped.
Auto-forwarding
Copy new posts from a Telegram channel or group to your own as they arrive, filtered by keyword or media type, with links, mentions and captions changed.
Scheduler
Send one-off and recurring messages to Telegram contacts, groups and channels at the time and in the timezone you choose, with templates and attachments.
Auto-forwarding messages
Learn how to auto-forward Telegram messages between channels and groups: forward or copy, bots or user accounts, filters, protected chats and safe pacing.
Sources
- Telegram blog: Rich Text Editor, Communities, Ephemeral Messages in Groups, 350 Million GIFs (14 July 2026) · checked
- Telegram: The Evolution of Telegram (July 2026: Communities) · checked
- Telegram Bot API changelog (Bot API 10.2 and 10.3) · checked
- Telegram API: channels.editCreator (transfer channel ownership) · checked
- Telegram Bot API: Community · checked
- Telegram for Android source: English interface strings · checked
- Telegram for Android source: ChatEditActivity.java (who sees Add to a Community) · checked
- Telegram for Android source: CommunityCreateActivity.java (basic groups upgraded first) · checked
- Telegram for iOS source: English interface strings · checked
- Telegram Desktop source: English interface strings · checked
- Telegram Desktop source: add_to_community_box.cpp (new community name, photo and visibility; admins add chats directly, others suggest them) · checked
- Telegram Desktop source: edit_peer_info_box.cpp (community option for owners of supergroups, channels and bots) · checked
- Telegram Desktop source: community_box.cpp (which chats you can add) · checked
- Telegram Desktop source: api_communities.cpp (chat and bot limits from server config) · checked
- Telegram blog: Shareable Chat Folders, Custom Wallpapers and More (21 April 2023) · checked
- Telegram blog: Topics in Groups, Collectible Usernames, Voice-to-Text for Video Messages and More (5 November 2022) · checked
- Telegram blog: Welcome Messages, Buttons in Messages and Signed Gifts (25 August 2026) · checked
- Telegram FAQ · checked
How the guides are researched and updated: editorial standards.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Can’t find it? Contact support
Do Telegram communities need Telegram Premium?
Telegram doesn’t say they do. Its 14 July 2026 announcement calls only the Rich Text Editor “available to Telegram Premium users only”, and the community screens in the open-source Android and Desktop apps contain no Premium check. Telegram could still apply rules on its servers, so if the option is missing, first check that you own the chat and that your app is up to date.
Can I change a community chat from hidden to visible later?
No. When you add a chat, the Android, iPhone and Desktop apps all warn: “You won’t be able to change this later.” Visibility is set per chat, so one community can mix visible and hidden chats, but each chat’s setting is fixed once it is linked. Choose Hidden for anything that might hold paid material or staff discussion, because a visible chat can’t be hidden afterwards.
How many chats can one Telegram community hold?
Telegram doesn’t publish the number. Telegram Desktop reads separate limits for chats and for bots from Telegram’s server configuration and, when you reach one, says “Limit of … chats reached”; the iPhone app says the community “has reached the maximum number of chats.” Because the server sets the limit, it can change without an app update. If you hit it, remove chats you no longer need or split the community into two.
Does deleting a Telegram community delete its groups and channels?
No. Telegram Desktop’s confirmation says deleting a community “will detach all its chats”, so the groups, channels and bots carry on as separate chats with their own members and admins. Removing a single chat works the same way, with Remove Group from Community on its edit screen. What disappears is the community itself: its name and the shared directory that let members find the other chats.
What does “Too many communities” mean on Telegram?
Despite the name, it isn’t about the Communities feature. Here Telegram’s apps use “communities” to mean groups and channels: the Android message says you are a member of too many groups and channels and must leave some before joining or creating another, and where Telegram Premium is offered, the message adds that it doubles the limit. Telegram Desktop’s Too Many Communities screen lists your least active ones to leave.
Can I add a channel I don’t own to my community?
Not yourself. The add-to-community option appears only on chats you own, so a partner’s channel joins only when its owner adds it, or suggests it for your approval if you set Who can add chats to Only admins. That keeps control with each owner, who can also take the chat out again later from its own edit screen.