Microsoft Teams Webinars give you a structured, professional way to present to a large audience — whether that is a product demo, a training session, or a company-wide briefing. Unlike a standard Teams meeting where everyone joins as a participant, a webinar is built around a one-to-many format: attendees register in advance, join as listeners by default, and interact through controlled channels like Q&A. This guide walks you through every stage of the process, from creating the webinar and building the registration page right through to reviewing your post-event engagement report.
\n\n\n\nTeams Webinar vs Teams Meeting vs Teams Live Event
\n\n\n\nBefore you set anything up, it helps to know which Teams format you actually need. Microsoft offers three distinct event types and choosing the wrong one will limit what you can do.
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- Teams Meeting — collaborative and open. All participants can share video, audio, and their screen by default. Best for internal calls, project check-ins, and small group discussions where everyone contributes. \n\n
- Teams Webinar — structured broadcast. Attendees register before joining, arrive muted and without video, and interact via Q&A or chat. Presenters are explicitly assigned. Best for external audiences, product demos, and training events with up to 1,000 attendees. \n\n
- Teams Live Event / Town Hall — broadcast only. Designed for very large audiences (up to 10,000 or more depending on licence). Attendees cannot interact directly. Microsoft has been transitioning away from Live Events in favour of Town Halls, which offer a more modern interface within the same Teams client. \n
To run a Teams Webinar you need at least a Microsoft 365 Business Standard licence or equivalent. It is not available on the free version of Teams or on Microsoft 365 Business Basic. If you are also creating a dedicated team to organise your event, take a look at how to create a team in Microsoft Teams for a full walkthrough.
\n\n\n\nStep 1 — Create the Webinar
\n\n\n\nCreating a webinar starts from your Teams calendar, not from within an existing team channel.
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- Open Microsoft Teams and click the Calendar icon in the left-hand navigation bar. \n\n
- Click the dropdown arrow next to New meeting in the top-right corner. \n\n
- Select Webinar from the menu options. \n\n
- Fill in the event title, start date and time, end date and time, and a description that attendees will see on the registration page. \n\n
- Add any co-presenters by typing their names in the Required presenters field. Co-presenters will have full presenter controls during the event. \n\n
- Click Save to create the event and proceed to the registration setup. \n
At this point the webinar exists in your calendar but no one can register yet. The next step is building the registration page.
\n\n\n\nStep 2 — Set Up the Registration Page
\n\n\n\nTeams generates a registration page automatically, but you have meaningful control over how it looks and what information you collect.
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- From the webinar event details, click View registration form to open the registration page editor. \n\n
- The default fields are First name, Last name, and Email address. These are mandatory and cannot be removed. \n\n
- Click Add field to include additional questions — for example, job title, company name, or a custom multiple-choice question. \n\n
- Under Registration settings, choose whether registration is open to Everyone (public) or restricted to People in my organisation. \n\n
- Optionally set a registration deadline to close sign-ups before the event date. \n\n
- Click Save and then Copy registration link. This is the URL you will share with your audience. \n
The registration page is hosted by Microsoft and branded with your event title and description. Attendees receive an automatic confirmation email with a unique join link immediately after registering.
\n\n\n\nStep 3 — Configure Attendee Settings
\n\n\n\nWebinar attendee settings are separate from the registration page and control what attendees can and cannot do during the event. You will find these options in the Meeting options section of the event details.
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- Who can bypass the lobby — set to People in my organisation or Only me and co-organisers to prevent attendees from entering before the host is ready. \n\n
- Allow attendees to unmute — this is off by default in webinars and should remain off for broadcast-style events. Turn it on only if you want an interactive Q&A segment with open audio. \n\n
- Allow meeting chat — you can enable chat for everyone, limit it to during the meeting only, or turn it off entirely. \n\n
- Q&A — Teams Webinars include a dedicated Q&A panel that is separate from chat. Attendees submit questions, and presenters can answer publicly or privately, mark questions as answered, and dismiss off-topic submissions. \n\n
- Presenter vs Attendee roles — anyone listed as a presenter in the event details has full control of audio, video, screen sharing, and the Q&A panel. Attendees arrive view-only by default. \n
Step 4 — Promote and Manage Registrations
\n\n\n\nOnce the registration link is live, your next task is driving sign-ups and keeping an eye on who has registered.
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- Share the registration link via email, your website, social media, or any other channel you use to reach your audience. \n\n
- To view registrations, open the webinar event from your Teams calendar and look for the Registration tab. You will see a running list of everyone who has signed up, including any answers to custom questions. \n\n
- Click Download registrant list to export the data as a CSV file, which you can import into your CRM or email marketing platform before the event. \n\n
- Teams automatically sends reminder emails to registrants — typically 24 hours before and 15 minutes before the event starts. You do not need to set these up manually. \n
Step 5 — Running the Webinar
\n\n\n\nOn the day of the event, the experience differs significantly depending on whether you join as a presenter or as an attendee.
\n\n\n\nAs a presenter, you join through the calendar event in Teams and enter the full meeting interface with all controls visible. You can share your screen, manage the Q&A panel, and see the attendee count in the participants list. It is worth joining five to ten minutes early to check your audio and video before attendees are admitted.
\n\n\n\nAs an attendee, joining happens via the unique link in their confirmation email. They arrive muted and without video enabled, and their interface is stripped back — they see the presenter’s content and have access to Q&A but cannot disrupt the session.
\n\n\n\nDuring the webinar, use these presenter features to keep things running smoothly:
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- Spotlight a speaker by right-clicking their video tile and selecting Spotlight. This pins that person’s video for all attendees regardless of who is speaking. \n\n
- PowerPoint Live lets you present a deck directly from within Teams rather than screen sharing. Attendees can privately scroll through slides at their own pace while you control the main view. \n\n
- Monitor the Q&A panel throughout the session. Assign a co-presenter to handle incoming questions so you can stay focused on presenting. \n\n
- If a registrant arrives late and hits the lobby, you will see a notification and can admit them manually from the participants panel. \n
Step 6 — Recording the Webinar
\n\n\n\nRecording your webinar lets you share it with people who could not attend live and repurpose the content afterwards.
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- During the webinar, click the More actions menu (the three-dot icon in the meeting toolbar). \n\n
- Select Start recording. All participants receive a notification that the meeting is being recorded. \n\n
- When the webinar ends, the recording processes automatically and saves to the OneDrive of the person who started the recording, typically within a few minutes of the session closing. \n\n
- From OneDrive, share the recording link with registrants, embed it on a landing page, or upload it to a video hosting platform. \n
For a detailed walkthrough of the recording process and how to find recordings afterwards, see our guide on how to record a Microsoft Teams meeting. If the recording option is greyed out or missing entirely, the most common causes and fixes are covered in our post on Microsoft Teams meeting recording not available.
\n\n\n\nStep 7 — Post-Webinar Follow-Up
\n\n\n\nOne of the most useful features of Teams Webinars is the engagement report that becomes available after the event ends. This gives you a clear picture of how the session performed and who showed up.
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- Open the webinar event from your Teams calendar after the session has ended. \n\n
- Navigate to the Attendance tab to see a breakdown of who attended, when they joined, and when they left. \n\n
- Cross-reference this with the registrant list to identify no-shows — people who registered but did not attend. This segment is often worth a follow-up email with the recording link. \n\n
- Click Download attendance report to export the data as a CSV. Import this into your CRM to update contact records, trigger automated follow-up sequences, or score leads based on attendance. \n
The combination of registration data and attendance data gives you a clean, structured list to work from — something that a standard Teams meeting does not provide.
\n\n\n\nFrequently Asked Questions
\n\n\n\nHow many people can attend a Teams webinar?
\n\n\n\nTeams Webinars support up to 1,000 attendees with a standard Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Teams Essentials licence. For larger events, Microsoft offers a Teams Premium licence that extends webinar capacity to 20,000 attendees and adds additional features such as green room, attendee spotlight controls, and RTMP-in streaming.
\n\n\n\nCan attendees ask questions during the webinar?
\n\n\n\nYes. The Q&A panel is available to attendees throughout the event. They can submit questions in text form at any time, and presenters can choose to answer them publicly (visible to all attendees) or privately (only the person who asked sees the response). Presenters can also mark questions as answered or dismiss them to keep the panel manageable.
\n\n\n\nCan I run a Teams webinar without requiring attendees to register first?
\n\n\n\nRegistration is a core part of the Teams Webinar format and cannot be completely disabled. If you need an event where people can join without signing up in advance, a standard Teams meeting is a better fit — you simply share the meeting link and anyone with it can join. The trade-off is that you lose the controlled attendee experience and the structured attendance reporting that a webinar provides.
\n\n\n\nDoes Teams send automatic reminder emails to registrants?
\n\n\n\nYes. Microsoft Teams sends automated reminder emails to everyone who has registered — one email approximately 24 hours before the event and another reminder 15 minutes before it starts. Each email contains the attendee’s unique join link. You do not need to configure these reminders manually, and they cannot currently be customised in terms of timing or content without a Teams Premium licence.
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