Bluesky teases the roadmap for 2026: better discovery feed, real-time features, and more

Social network Bluesky is teasing its roadmap for next year, focusing on things like improving the app’s algorithmic Discover feed, providing better recommendations to its users on who to follow, giving the app a real-time feel, and more.

At the same time, the company admitted that it needs to work on getting the “fundamentals” right as well.

Launched publicly in early 2024 after an invitation-only period, the decentralized X and Threads alternative has since expanded to over 42 million users, according to data obtained directly from the Bluesky API for developers.

Although it differs from mainstream social media with its custom feeds and configurable algorithms, Bluesky hasn’t caught up to competitors in terms of core features, like private accounts, drafts, support for longer videos, and more.

Bluesky’s head of product, Alex Benzer, acknowledged some of these concerns in a new post on the company’s website, where he said that “the fundamentals must be strong” before Bluesky can expect users to stick around.

The announcements come after a slowdown in usage of Bluesky, which saw a 40% year-over-year decline in the number of daily active users as of October 2025, according to data from market intelligence provider Sameweb, as reported by Forbes.

In addition to supporting drafts, Binzer said the app’s author should handle media better, noting that three-minute videos aren’t enough, and videos need to load faster. Additionally, he wants Bluesky to support posting more than four photos at a time, and believes creating topics should be easier as well.

The need for special accounts has not been addressed, but it will take longer to achieve, as Plosky previously explained. The plan is for the underlying protocol, AT Protocol (or AT Proto for short), to eventually support private accounts. But that won’t come anytime soon.

Benzer also pointed to improvements to the app’s Discover feed, which can add topic tags as a way to direct people to posts related to their interests. “Who to follow” suggestions will also be improved, as finding high-quality connections can improve the overall user experience.

Binzer believes Bluesky needs more of a “real-time” feel, whether that’s around events like sports, or interesting political moments like elections. He said the company is working on creating organization tools for its team to provide high-quality, timely personalized feeds during live events. Binzer said the team is exploring other new features within feeds that would make those feeds feel “less like just scrolling through posts and more like a hangout.” (What that means, we’re not quite sure!)

In terms of growing the overall ecosystem, which the community has dubbed “Atmosphere,” the company will look to improve interoperability with other applications also built on the underlying AT protocol.

For example, if you live stream on Twitch or Streamplace, another AT-supported app, you’ll see a LIVE badge appear on your Bluesky profile picture.

Binzer said another integration like this is coming “soon.”

While Bluesky has been successful in adding users, actual usage on Bluesky ebbs and flows, with increases often coinciding with changes at X or moments of political tension. Meanwhile, Meta’s Threads became the second closest competitor to X. New third-party data suggested that Threads now outpaced X in daily mobile users, although X was still ahead on the desktop web.

The main advantage of Threads is that it is backed by the resources of one of the tech giants, allowing for extensive cross-promotion, ease of setup, and large amounts of resources. As a result, Threads has been rapidly shipping new features over the past year or so, including things like interest-based communities, better filters, direct messaging, longer texts, and disappearing posts. That’s helped set it apart from X and gain traction among users, including those who want a network that favors creator content over politics, something Threads had deprioritized until last year.