2,000 member limit

The problem

WhatsApp communities have a limit of 2,000 members. Once WhatsApp communities reach this limit, no new members can join until current members leave.

The Girona Buddies WhatsApp community reached 2,000 members on 8 February 2026.

This means that, unless action is taken, the community is effectively closed to new people.

Communities rely on a steady flow of new members to stay alive. Without new people joining, Girona Buddies would slowly stagnate and eventually die as existing members become inactive.

The solution

Over time, subgroups in Girona Buddies have accumulated dozens or sometimes hundreds of inactive members (including many people who probably don’t even remember they’re still in them). Because of this, we’re going to close the existing subgroups one by one and create new versions of them. If someone is only in that one subgroup — and not in any other subgroup in the community — when it is removed, they will automatically be removed from the community. These are called inactive member purges or just purges.

Before closing a subgroup, an admin will post a message in it saying something like: “This subgroup is closing. Please join the new one.” Members will then have a few days to join the new subgroup. The idea is that:

• Active members will see the message and rejoin.
• Inactive members (who don’t see or respond) will naturally drop off.

The community will gradually consist only of people who are actually engaged.

In short, this is a way of cleaning up inactive members while giving everyone a fair chance to stay.

This idea is based on the actions taken by an admin in a WhatsApp community group called Barcelona English Speakers, which reached 2,000 members in 2025. Their solution was to remove the main subgroup from the community (thereby ejecting anyone from the community who was only in the main subgroup) and start a new main subgroup.

The message from the admin read:

"Hi all, we have been at capacity for the main group and the community for some time now. Sadly WhatsApp limits individual groups to 1024 and communities to 2000 so we need to make some changes to free up space. We are going to close the main group today as we migrate to a new BCN English Speakers group (the community will not change) - the existing group will still be there, but you will not be able to post and it will direct you to the new group. What do you need to do? Join the new group if you are still active. We have about 95% lurkers in the community so also feel free to get more involved."(Message in the Barcelona English Speakers community on 25 June 2025)

Members who have not joined any subgroups

Another issue is that some people have joined the community but have not joined any subgroups. Maybe someone added them to the community, or maybe they joined the community, then got confused and did nothing. These people are immune to purges because they are not in any subgroups. They are inactive yet difficult to remove. If nothing is done, this problem will get worse, as the number of these members increases. One solution is to create a new community and transfer all the subgroups across, ensuring only members who are in subgroups transfer over.

Actions taken

• On 5 February 2026, Paul posted a warning in the General Chat (which had some 950 members) that the General Chat was about to be removed because Girona Buddies was close to reaching the 2,000-member limit. Paul asked everyone to join a new General Chat. Some 250 people did this. On 9 February 2026, Paul removed the General Chat from the community. This removed around 70 people from the community, bringing the number of members down from 2,000 to 1,932.
• On 12 February 2026, the cycling subgroup had reached 249 members, but an admin, Greg, estimated that only 10 were active. Greg posted a message in the Cycling subgroup asking all the members to join a new Cycling subgroup. On 19 Feb, Paul removed the old subgroup from the community, which also removed 8 people from the community.
• On 20 February 2026, Paul posted notices in the Selling subgroup, the Jobs subgroup, and the Apartments subgroup that these subgroups were closing in three days, and for members to join new versions of these subgroups. On 23 February, he removed the subgroups.
  • Removing Jobs removed 18 people from the community
  • Removing Selling removed 12 people from the community
  • Removing Apartments removed 29 people from the community

Other solutions

Ask inactive people to leave the community

• On 6 February 2026, Julia posted a community announcement asking people to leave if they no longer used the group. Around 25 people left, bringing the number of members down to 1,918.

Slow growth

We can slow growth by

• changing the join links so only people physically present in Spain can join (based on IP address)
• remove the join link from Instagram and other places around the web, and rely only on people inviting their friends

Remove inactive members

We could manually remove people who we think haven't participated in a long time (a year, for example).

Switch to another platform

We can remake the community on Telegram, which doesn't have the 2,000-member limit.

Split into multiple communities

We are approaching the annoying WhatsApp group limit of 2000 members soon so we are thinking about how to manage this. The only real way is to split groups into new communities https://barna.news/barcelona-english-speakers-whatsapp-community-september-update/

Also, a group called Espartanos once reached the 1,024 WhatsApp group limit and multiple spin-off groups formed.

We could split into communities based on interests (a community for languages, a community for hiking, etc) or simply create Girona Buddies 1, Girona Buddies 2, Girona Buddies 3, etc.