Bluesky teases 2026 roadmap: a better Discover feed, real-time features and more

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

At the same time, the company admitted that it needs to work on getting the “basics” right, too.

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

Though it’s differentiated from mainstream social media with its custom feeds and configurable algorithms, Bluesky hasn’t caught up to rivals with regard to basic 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 “basics need to be solid” before Bluesky can expect users to stick around.

Those remarks come after a usage slowdown on Bluesky, which saw a 40% year-over-year drop in daily active users as of October 2025, according to data from market intelligence provider Similarweb, as reported by Forbes.

In addition to supporting drafts, Benzer said the app’s composer should handle media better, noting that three-minute-long videos aren’t enough, and videos should upload faster. Plus, he wants Bluesky to support posting more than four photos at a time, and thinks threads should be easier to create, too.

The need for private accounts wasn’t addressed, but those will take longer to realize, Bluesky has previously explained. The plan is for the underlying protocol, the AT Protocol (or AT Proto for short), to eventually support private accounts. But that won’t be coming anytime soon.

Benzer also pointed to improvements to the app’s Discover feed, which could add topic tags as a way to guide 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.

Benzer believes that Bluesky needs to have more of a “real-time” feel, whether that’s around events like sports, or political moments of interest like elections. The company is building curation tools for its team to make high-quality and timely custom feeds available during live events, he said. The team is exploring other new features within feeds that would make these feeds feel “less like just scrolling through posts and more like hanging out,” Benzer said. (What that means, we’re not exactly sure!)

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

For instance, if you go live on Twitch or Streamplace, another app powered by the AT Protocol, you’ll see a LIVE badge appear on your profile photo on Bluesky.

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

While Bluesky has succeeded in adding users, actual usage on Bluesky ebbs and flows, with surges often timed to changes at X or moments of political tension. Meanwhile, Meta’s Threads has become the next-nearest competitor to X. New third-party data indicates that Threads is now outpacing X in daily mobile users, though X was still ahead on the desktop web.

Threads’ main advantage is that it’s backed by the resources of a tech giant, allowing for heavy cross-promotion, easier onboarding, and tons 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, DMs, long-form text, and disappearing posts. That’s helped to differentiate it from X and gain traction among users, including those who want a network that favors creator content over politics, which Threads had deprioritized up until a year ago.