Libera.Chat: a complete guide to the largest IRC network

Libera.Chat is the largest IRC network and the de-facto home of open source chat: roughly 30,000 concurrent users across more than 22,000 channels, including the official channels of most major projects. Founded in May 2021 by Freenode's former staff (that story), it is run as a Swedish nonprofit.

Connecting #

• Server: irc.libera.chat, port 6697 with TLS (always; the plaintext port exists but should not be used).
• Webchat: web.libera.chat for a no-install start.
• Help channel: #libera — staffed, helpful, read the topic first.

Registration and SASL #

Register your nick with NickServ and verify by email (full guide). Then configure SASL in your client rather than identifying manually — on Libera this is more than convenience: connections from many VPN, Tor and cloud-provider ranges are required to authenticate via SASL before connecting at all. If you connect from a VPS or VPN and get refused, SASL is almost always the answer.

Channel namespaces #

Libera formalizes the old convention:

• #project — official namespace, for projects and communities that registered with the network (which also entitles them to project cloaks).
• ##topic — informal namespace for unofficial and topical channels (##chat, ##linux historically, ##politics).

If you are bringing a project to Libera, register the project formally; group registration is what gives you ownership of the namespace and cloaks for your contributors.

Cloaks #

A cloak replaces your visible hostname — user/yourname for individuals, @project/role/name for project members. Individual cloaks are requested from staff in #libera-cloak once registered. Cloaks hide your address from casual /whois; they are identity badges as much as privacy tools.

Policies that actually affect users #

• VPN/Tor: allowed, but with the SASL requirement above; Tor access has specific documented endpoints and rules.
• Bots: require channel-operator permission, must be marked with bot mode, and the 2026 policy update tightened rules notably for LLM-driven bots after a wave of unsupervised agents. Bot etiquette is now policy.
• Off-topic: Libera is chartered for FOSS and peer-directed projects; general socializing belongs in ##-namespace channels.

Finding your people #

/msg alis LIST *term* searches channels (more techniques); virtually every major distribution, language and tool has its channel here under its own name. For the wider network landscape beyond Libera, see the network overview.