Starting a Meetup group connects you with passionate people looking to share experiences in real life. It’s simple to start a group and schedule events, and we’ll help promote your group to interested people who are ready to join you.

Start a group

1. Creating your group

When you’re ready to start a group, follow the steps to choose a group name, write a description, and sign up for a subscription plan. Learn more about organizer subscription pricing.

When you finish creating a group, a member of our team reviews it based on our community guidelines and makes sure it gets promoted to the right people. You can expect a decision by email within 24 hours.

For more, watch our Community Support specialists walk you through starting a group in this video:

Instructions for the Meetup app

To start a new group from the app (iOS and Android), create an account and select + New group from the Home view.

2. Finding members

Shortly after a group is approved, we’ll help share it with interested members in your area. This announcement is targeted to members who have similar interests to your group and invites them to join.

3. Organizing events

We recommend creating your first event after submitting your group for approval or shortly after approval. Having an event scheduled right away attracts interested people when your group is announced. You’ll have access to your group and the ability to create an event while your group is waiting for approval.

If the organizer of a group steps down, they can nominate a member to take their place. If no one is nominated, any member of the group can step up and become the new organizer.

If you decide to become an organizer, you’ll need to start a subscription if you don’t have one already. You'll be able to start a subscription when you go through the process of stepping up as an organizer. Every organizer needs their own organizer subscription. Subscriptions are not connected to individual groups, and can’t be transferred from one organizer to another.

Accepting a nomination

If you’ve been nominated as an organizer, you’ll receive a notification directing you to the group’s homepage.

To accept a nomination to step up:

1. Navigate to the group's homepage.
2. Under “Organizers” select Accept.
3. Follow the prompts to start your own organizer subscription plan.

Stepping up without a nomination

If an organizer steps down without nominating someone, members will be invited to step up as the new organizer.

To step up as a group's organizer:

1. Navigate to the group's homepage.
2. Under “Organizers” select Become the Organizer.
3. On the next page, select the red Become the organizer button.

When you have lots of interests, it’s only natural to want to share them all. If you can’t find a local Meetup group that fits what you’re looking for, we encourage you to start one yourself.

As an organizer, you can lead up to three groups with an active organizer subscription plan. We won’t ask you to pay anything addition to start a second or third group, or to step up as organizer of an existing group.

If you decide to organize more than one group, we recommend appointing a leadership team to help you manage the additional responsibilities. Your leadership team can help host events, moderate discussions, and keep your community thriving.

If you’re interested in building a larger network of communities, or if you're currently managing more than three groups using separate accounts, we encourage you to check out Meetup Pro.

All new groups are submitted for approval based on our groups and events policies before they're live on Meetup. We typically send an email within 24 hours to confirm if your group has been approved. While you're waiting for approval, you can still customize your group and share it on social media.

I can't find my new Meetup group

If you can't find a group you recently created, it may be in review. Groups in the approval process are not searchable on Meetup until they're approved. You can still customize your group and share the group's URL during the approval process. When a group is approved it will be searchable on the Find page.