As 2025 winds down, we’re pausing to reflect on what we built together this year and to thank you for being part of it. It’s been a year full of exciting changes - and some tough decisions - and we want to recognise where we’ve come from and where we’re going. 

We are excited about a future that is grounded in our open source values. We will continue to pursue our mission to make the internet a better place by creating space for conversations that matter. 

We’re glad you’re with us.

Highlights from the past year

Over the past year, we’ve seen people do some amazing things with Discourse.

After moving from Discord, Cursor scaled their ability to get qualified answers to their users, and has since layered on new AI features directly into their forum.

Another AI leader is now using Discourse to successfully manage more than 100K users per month who are making contributions to their projects.

The beta forums for the life simulation game inZOI quickly rolled out our new AI translation features when we released them in November to unlock multilingual conversations in all 13 languages supported by their game.

And when Sonar faced next generation AI generated spam waves early in the year, we built new capabilities using existing automation features that helped them get unwanted content under control for less than 25 cents a month – capabilities that are now a default feature available to everyone using Discourse and included free on our hosting.

We want everyone to have the ability to create a place of their own for conversations that matter. Our focus this past year was on making Discourse more accessible to a wider audience, and using AI to offer our communities powerful new capabilities that we’d long dreamed of, but were not feasible until now.

Some of the highlights that came out of these efforts:

• AI spam detection for everyone
  We added a built-in tool for detecting spam that greatly outperforms the solution we’d been using for the past 10+ years, and can be more easily tuned to keep up with the new wave of AI-generated spam. This is configured out-of-the-box for customers on our hosting, and easy to enable for self-hosters, as it works with all the most popular LLM providers, like all of our AI features.
• A new composer with a rich text editor
  We added a new rich text editor into our composer to make it easier for newcomers to Discourse to participate. The composer continues to support markdown, for those who prefer it, and can seamlessly toggle between the two modes for those that prefer one or the other for different use cases.
• Horizon: a new, modern default theme
  We created Horizon, a new, modern theme for an improved out-of-the-box experience for new sites. Our previous default theme has been renamed to Foundation, and both are available as options which are built into the product itself. 
• Discourse ID: an easier way for your members to signup and log in
  We created Discourse ID, our new login service designed for Discourse. Enabling Discourse ID only takes one-click, and it is preconfigured to support other popular identity providers, so you don’t have to set them up or maintain them individually.
• AI powered automatic translations for multilingual communities
  We created a seamless multilingual experience for communities, with the ability to automatically translate all the content on your site into multiple languages, and make your community crawlable in those languages so it is more easily discovered by people searching for related content on other platforms in their native language.

We’ve also made countless other changes big and small to improve the overall experience for community members and admins using Discourse, including a more intuitive admin interface, an updated review queue for moderators, improvements to our calendar and events features, an updated lightbox for photos and images, support for multiple drafts of topics and replies, and an MCP server to make it easier to interact with Discourse using external AI tools. 

If you haven’t had a chance to explore these changes yet, this is a great time to kick the tires on what’s new and think about how you might take advantage of it in your community. As you do so, join us in our community to share what you learn or ask questions along the way.

Organizational changes

We are returning to a profit-first operating model.

This decision allows us to navigate market uncertainty independently, without the need for further fundraising. Unfortunately, this transition meant parting ways with talented team members who helped build Discourse into what it is today. We are deeply grateful for their contributions. 

In many ways, this is a return to our roots. Since our founding, Discourse has operated with a focus on sustainability, but we utilized our Series A funding over the past few years to accelerate growth and mature our product for enterprise needs. That investment succeeded: we now have experienced teams in development, customer success, professional services, and sales, alongside the most configurable, battle-tested community platform on the market.

While we originally planned to return to profitability by 2027, the economic climate convinced us that it is healthier to make that shift now.

Our revenue remains strong and growing, and these changes position us to maintain the high standards of privacy and autonomy you expect. 

We’re excited about and committed to our roadmap. We’re investing in new features and to help thoughtful builders nurture and grow thriving communities. We’re introducing more predictable releases, upgrade paths, and customization features for platform builders - while strengthening and refining the services we provide to our customers.

And we're firm in our belief that persistent, discoverable, asynchronous discussion between humans matters now more than ever.

Looking ahead to 2026

As we head into the new year, we’re looking forward to getting more Discourse features and ideas into your hands and seeing what you do with them.

We will be making it easier than ever to get started with Discourse, building on the foundations we’ve created with Discourse ID and Discourse Discover, enabling and encouraging users to find and join communities.

One of our leading goals for 2026 is to help communities to adapt to the changing needs of their members as they grow, with new tools for setting up and configuring spaces for every use case.

We’ll keep utilizing AI in new features, workflows and experiences while keeping you in the driver’s seat. We’ll help community teams keep a human-centric approach to building and managing their communities as they scale their operations, and allow members and stakeholders to surface and use the knowledge they create through conversation.

Our commitment

We built Discourse to last, and our commitment to you hasn’t changed.

The adjustments we’ve made this year put us on stronger footing to serve you for many years to come. 

Thank you for joining us for the long game. Bring on 2026!