New Delhi: Discord has completed a major privacy upgrade for its voice and video calls. The company said end-to-end encryption is now standard for every voice and video call on Discord, except Stage channels, with no opt-in needed from users.
The change comes after a multi-year effort around Discord’s DAVE protocol, an open and audited system built for encrypted audio and video. The company said the migration was completed at the beginning of March 2026, covering desktop, mobile, web browsers, gaming consoles, Discord bots, apps and its Social SDK.
Discord brings end-to-end encryption to calls
Discord said every voice and video call in DMs, group DMs, voice channels and Go Live streams is now end-to-end encrypted by default. For regular users, the big point is simple. Calls should look and feel the same, but with stronger privacy in the background.
The company wrote, “End-to-end Encryption is now standard for every voice and video call on Discord, outside of stage channels. No opt-in required.”
For gamers, streamers and online communities, this is a pretty big shift. Many of us use Discord for late-night squad talks, office chats, creator groups and random “bro join VC” moments. Now, those personal calls get encryption without users digging through settings.
Why Discord took time for E2E
Discord said its voice and video setup is tricky since a single call can include people on laptops, phones, PlayStation, Xbox and browsers at the same time. The company said DAVE is “likely one of the internet’s most platform-diverse E2EE voice and video implementations.”
The protocol is open, the implementation is open-source, and Discord said Trail of Bits externally audited the design and implementation. It also expanded its bug bounty program to cover the protocol.
Discord said it even worked with Mozilla after finding a Firefox issue that affected the protocol in real calls.
Stage channels are not included
Stage channels remain the exception. Discord said these are made for large broadcasts, such as live events, AMAs and community town halls.
The company said it has “no current plans to extend E2EE to text messages.” It added that many Discord text features were built with a different setup, making encrypted text a bigger engineering challenge.