Greet everyone who joins with a welcome message, and add buttons to messages
What it is
Since August 2026 a group or channel can have a welcome message: when someone joins, only that person sees it, so the chat stays clean for everyone else. A welcome can be several messages with photos, videos and rich formatting such as tables. The same update gave developers buttons inside a message's text: one message can hold a survey, a quiz, a game or a product order, and any number of people can use it at once, in groups and channels.
How to do it
- Open the group's or channel's profile and select Edit › Welcome Message.
- Send the messages newcomers should see: text, photos, videos, several in a row.
- For tables and other rich formatting, open the text editor with the ⛶ icon,… For tables and other rich formatting, open the text editor with the ⛶ icon, which appears once you type more than 3 lines.
- Buttons need a bot and some code: the bot sends a rich message with buttons… Buttons need a bot and some code: the bot sends a rich message with buttons through Bot API 10.3. With ephemeral messages, each person taps through their own flow, and a bot admin with the right to manage welcome messages can send such messages to newcomers.
Watch out
- Telegram's post says chat owners set up welcome messages; another admin needs the right to manage them.
- Members already in the chat don't get it, only people who join.
- The rich text editor launched in July 2026 for Telegram Premium users only.
- On an outdated app, a new feature shows up as a placeholder with an update button.
With Gem
Gem doesn't set Telegram's welcome message. In your project's groups it greets new members itself, keeps the group rules pinned (you write them once, Gem translates them for each group) and removes «joined» lines.
Sources
- https://telegram.org/blog/welcome-messages-buttons-TG-13
- https://telegram.org/blog/communities-editor-invisible-messages
- https://core.telegram.org/bots/api-changelog
- https://core.telegram.org/bots/features