As Microsoft announced in August 2025, Teams private channels received a significant update, bringing greater flexibility, higher membership limits, and the ability to schedule meetings directly within a private channel. These changes affect all users working in private channels.
The most noticeable changes for users:
- Private channels are no longer capped at 250 members; the new limit is 5,000.
- Teams no longer restricts private channels to 30; instead, they count toward the team’s overall limit of 1,000 channels.
- Users can now schedule meetings directly in a private channel, which was not previously possible.
- Newly created private channels no longer include a dedicated document library by default. Any files shared in a new private channel are stored in the channel’s root folder.
Here is your task:
Microsoft reports that the migration of private channels began in early October 2025 and is 95% complete, with completion expected by late April 2026. A small number of private channels with unusual membership configurations may require additional time to migrate; further details on those cases will be shared when available.
Teams administrators should check the migration state via PowerShell to determine whether the tenant is affected by failed channel migrations.
Run the following command to retrieve the migration state. The Teams Administrator role is required to run it.
Connect-MicrosoftTeams
Get-TenantPrivateChannelMigrationStatus
The result shows whether the migration is complete, still in progress with remaining channels, or failed for some channels.
For failed channels, the only option is to wait. I found no way to identify the affected channels or resolve them manually.
Compared to a completed migration.
Reminder:
If not already done, the four recommended compliance tasks from Microsoft should be reviewed.
- Microsoft Purview Hold and eDiscovery
- Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies
- Microsoft Purview Retention Policies
- Microsoft policies for Optical Character Recognition
A remark about the private channel guest issue
If your tenant is also affected by the private channel guest issue covered in my two previous posts, this migration has not resolved it. It’s an issue in SharePoint. Microsoft has confirmed the issue is on their side, has been reported by multiple customers, and is still analyzing how to address it.
