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

Bluesky social network 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 more of 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.

It was released to the public on Early 2024 After an invite-only period, X and Threads’ decentralized alternative has since expanded 42 million usersaccording 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 A new blog post on the company’s websitewhere he said that “the fundamentals have to be solid” before Bluesky can expect users to stick around.

These statements come after A Use Slow down On Bluesky, which saw a 40% year-over-year decline in daily active users as of October 2025, according to data from market intelligence provider Sameweb, As reported by Forbes magazine.

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 He plans Designed for the underlying protocol, the AT Protocol (or AT Proto for short), for recently Support for 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 stream live on Twitch or Streamplaceanother app powered by the AT protocol, you’ll see a LIVE badge appear on your profile picture on Bluesky.

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

Although Bluesky has been successful in adding users, actual usage on Bluesky ebbs and flows, with spikes often occurring timed Changes in X or Moments of political tension. Meanwhile, Meta’s Threads has become the second closest competitor to X. New third-party data suggests as much Topics now go beyond X In everyday mobile users, though, the X was still ahead of 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 shipping new features quickly over the past year or so, including things like Interest-based communities, Better filters, Direct messages, Long-form textand Posts disappear. This helped set it apart from X and gain traction among users, including those who wanted a network that favored creator content over politics, which Threads had His priorities were reduced higher Even a year ago.