Esri Community 2026 Migration FAQ

[#1]

Esri Community is migrating to a new platform host. Read our Migration Announcement for an overview of what’s taking place.

This post is a living document that will be updated during key phases of the platform migration. We recommend subscribing to this post and to our Esri Community Blog so that you’ll be notified of important updates. Note: if you cannot subscribe, it may mean your account isn’t verified.

Why is this migration happening?

Esri’s online community has achieved many growth milestones during the more than two decades it has existed. During that time, new technologies and improvements in how online communities work have enabled Esri Community and its former versions to expand the range of services offered. The result has been a global gathering space that GIS practitioners visit tens of millions of times a year to ask or answer questions, share ideas, and collaborate to solve problems with GIS.

Esri Community has reached another key milestone in its journey by outgrowing the platform technology it is currently hosted on. To achieve an experience that best serves the needs of our users today and in the future, we are migrating Esri Community to a platform technology best aligned to that purpose.

Isn’t Esri Community an Esri technology, like ArcGIS?

Online communities are almost always hosted on third-party platform technologies that specialize in supporting a community-driven experience. Posting and commenting, event management, moderation, and ideas exchanges are a few of the core services that community platform technologies may provide. In line with standard practices, Esri Community is hosted on third-party technology and tailored with the branding, structure, and feature set that make the experience uniquely Esri.

The Esri Community team maintains and manages Esri Community for users.

When is Esri Community launching on the new platform?

Our goal for the launch is August 24^th, 2026. Because the work involved is significant and unanticipated steps may emerge during the process, the date is subject to change.

Can I still use Esri Community the way I normally would right now?

A structure freeze for Esri Community Places and User Groups is now in effect and will last through to the launch on the new platform. This means that new Places and User Groups can’t be added and existing ones can’t be changed (for instance, by adding new boards or labels) until the migration process is complete. Members can still post, comment, and engage in other ways.

Read-Only Period: Shortly before launching on the new platform, there will be a read-only period during which pre-existing Community content can be accessed but not added to. In short, users will be able to view everything that’s already in Esri Community that they would normally have access to, but no new posts, comments, or other forms of engagement (such as kudos) can be made. This is a necessary step in the migration process and is expected to last more than a week.

A specific date for the read-only phase has not yet been set. We will provide more communication via an update to this FAQ and in the Esri Community Blog when it is scheduled.

Is the Esri Community name or brand changing?

The Esri Community name and logo are staying the same. You can anticipate some visual design improvements in the new platform as Esri Community keeps pace with Esri’s aesthetic conventions. Additionally, there will be some UX/UI differences between the current Esri Community experience and the new experience as we embrace variables between the two platform technologies. This includes making updates that better reflect our members’ preferences.

What changes and new features can I expect?

With new capabilities available both on the front and back end, some aspects of Esri Community will be refreshed to embrace a better overall user experience. This includes updates to navigation, available features, interaction styles, and more. In addition to functional updates, Esri Community will also see a modest design refresh that balances familiarity of current Esri Community pages with clean, appealing aesthetics attuned to Esri’s brand. 

More details about parity, terminology differences, and new features will be shared during upcoming phases. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

How will the new platform be optimized for a better user experience?

Our team has carefully evaluated the new platform against other options. Our confident conclusion is that it offers the best parity experience for features and processes that users currently value. At the same time, it offers some new capabilities that improve on the current experience — both in the front end for everyday users and behind-the-scenes for Esri Administrators who maintain the Community site.

More details about parity, terminology differences, and new features will be shared during upcoming phases. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Will members have to create new accounts?

No. Our members’ accounts and activity history will be migrated to the new experience. For members with active accounts, there will be no need to create a new one.
  

Will links to Esri Community pages still work?

Yes. Page URLs will change during the migration, but automatic redirects mean legacy links you may use outside of Esri Community will not be broken because of the move with the potential for limited exceptions.
  

Will the migration affect ArcGIS Online, My Esri, or organization accounts?

No. Esri Community is and will continue to be run on its own system apart from ArcGIS Online and My Esri. Customer members frequently access Esri Community via an ArcGIS public account username that may be tied to an ArcGIS Online, My Esri, or organizational account; however, aside from being connected by that username, updates to Esri Community do not automatically change a user’s account in other systems nor do changes to an ArcGIS Online or My Esri account automatically lead to updates in Esri Community.

If a user ever has trouble logging into their Esri Community account, they’re encouraged to contact our team at [email protected] for help.

Will there be user testing ahead of launch?

User testing would normally have a dedicated phase during a migration like this. Your feedback and partnership in shaping the Esri Community experience is key. Due to an unavoidably short timeline for this migration, the typical pre-launch user testing cannot take place.

With that said, our team has been collecting a great deal of your feedback on the Esri Community experience in recent years — what works and what stands to be improved — which we are incorporating as able. We’ll also continue to collect feedback post-migration as we iterate and refine the experience in an ongoing way.