By: Elaine Jones, Product Manager
Introduction
Previously, in our August 20.25.08 release, we increased the number of users that you can enroll in a single group from 200 to 3000 users. This change was introduced on our High Impact Changes Timeline in April 2025.
Now we are back to announce that we are making further improvements to the number of groups in each category! Within Brightspace, our groups tool currently allows you to create 200 groups per category and we have heard from our Product Idea Exchange, along with in-person conversations, that this limit is often a blocker to providing the types of groups that you need to create within your courses.
Along with increasing the number of groups per category we are also introducing an exciting new refresh for the Manage Groups page to ensure that managing these additional groups is easy with an at-a-glance overview of all your group categories with all the useful information you need to see.
We are excited to announce that we are planning to release these changes in our April (20.26.04) release. Please note that this release is subject to change, and any changes to timelines will be communicated via this blog post.
What changes to expect
We will be increasing the number of groups per category from 200 to 1000 groups, allowing for much more versatile group sizing within your categories. This limit will be enforced and cannot be exceeded, to ensure that Brightspace continues to perform well. This change will apply to all group enrollment types regardless of what creation method is used when creating groups, such as via the Manage Groups in Brightspace page or API calls. Along with our previous increase to 3000 users per group, these two group limits changes will ensure that you have much more flexibility when creating groups that you need for your courses.
As well our Manage Groups page is getting a new look, with all categories visible on a single page, showing all the information you need at once. You can see which categories exist and what enrollment types they are utilizing, how many groups each category has, what activities are associated, and which users are not yet enrolled. This new page will use our opt-in options for newly released pages, allowing you to opt-in to use this new page upon release. Later releases will move this new page from opt-in to on for all and those timelines will be announced later.
Figure: The current Manage Groups page
Figure(s): In progress designs for the new Manage Groups pages showing all categories, with the additional ability to drill down into an individual category to see all its groups
What comes next?
Keep an eye on our preview release notes for more information as we move closer to an April 2026 release.