Social VR was supposed to be the future of human connection. Meta bet billions on it. Microsoft built AltspaceVR, then killed it. Startups raised enormous rounds promising virtual worlds where millions would gather. In early 2026, the landscape has settled into something more modest and more interesting than the hype suggested.

The Survivors

VRChat: Still the heart of social VR. VRChat remains the largest and most active social VR platform, and it got there by doing almost the opposite of what corporate platforms attempted. It’s messy, community-driven, and largely unpolished — which is exactly why it works.

Users create their own worlds, design their own avatars (from photorealistic humans to cartoon cats to abstract geometry), and build their own social structures. There are comedy clubs, language exchange meetups, live music venues, and support groups.

The platform peaked during COVID lockdowns and settled into a stable, dedicated user base. Monthly active users have held steady through 2025 and into 2026, skewing toward a younger demographic that treats VRChat as a genuine social space.

For Australian users, the timezone means you’re often socialising with Japanese and Southeast Asian users during evening hours — which has created some genuinely interesting cross-cultural spaces.

Rec Room: The family-friendly alternative. Rec Room carved out a sustainable position as the social VR platform you can hand to a teenager. It works across VR headsets, phones, consoles, and PCs, giving it reach that VR-only platforms can’t match.

The game creation tools are more accessible than VRChat’s, making it popular with younger creators. Revenue from virtual item sales keeps the company funded. Australian communities exist but are smaller — people drop in to play paintball or escape rooms rather than to hang out and talk.

Horizon Worlds: Meta’s expensive work in progress. After widely reported growing pains — low user counts, harassment issues, graphics that became a meme — Meta has continued investing. By early 2026, it’s competent if unremarkable. Quest integration gives it a default-app advantage, and creator monetisation has attracted some dedicated world-builders. But it still feels corporate in a way VRChat doesn’t.

The Casualties

AltspaceVR’s shutdown stung. Microsoft closed AltspaceVR in March 2023, and the ripple effects are still felt. It had cultivated a mature, event-focused community that didn’t transplant easily. Many regulars migrated to VRChat, some to Horizon Worlds, and many simply left social VR entirely. The shutdown demonstrated a persistent risk: when a platform closes, the community doesn’t just lose a product — it loses a place.

Sansar, High Fidelity, and the rest. The list of social VR platforms that launched with ambition and faded quietly is long. Most failed for the same reason: building a social space is easy, but building a community is hard.

What People Actually Do

The most common misconception is that social VR works like text or video social media. Research shows it fills a different niche.

Hanging out. The primary activity is unstructured socialisation — sitting in virtual spaces, talking, exploring worlds together. Closer to being at a friend’s house than scrolling a feed.

Creative expression. Avatar creation and world building are major activities. For younger users, designing an avatar is self-expression far beyond choosing a profile picture.

Events. Live music, comedy shows, and educational talks draw significant audiences. VRChat venues regularly host performers playing to hundreds.

Support communities. Some of the most meaningful spaces are support groups — LGBTQ+ communities, mental health circles, neurodivergent meetups. The combination of presence through avatars and anonymity creates a dynamic some people find easier to engage with than text-based forums.

The Australian Angle

Australia’s social VR community is small but active. The main challenge is timezone — global activity peaks during US evenings, which is the Australian workday.

Sydney and Melbourne VRChat users form the largest clusters, with regular organised meetups. Several Australian creators have built popular worlds. Connectivity on congested NBN connections can cause latency that degrades the experience, though it’s not a dealbreaker.

The Honest Assessment

Social VR in 2026 is not a mass-market product. Regular users number in the low millions globally — meaningful, but a fraction of any traditional social platform.

What it is, though, is a genuinely different form of social interaction. For people who find it, especially younger users and those who benefit from the anonymity-plus-presence dynamic, it becomes a significant part of their social lives.

The platforms that survived served communities rather than chased scale. VRChat thrives because its users built something worth returning to. The platforms that failed built the space first and tried to attract the community second. That order doesn’t work.

For anyone curious, VRChat is the place to start. For most people, it won’t replace anything in their social lives. For some, it’ll become surprisingly important.