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WhatsApp Group Video Calls Will Soon Support Up To Eight People

The feature is arriving next week. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said sales of the company's Portal devices have gone up by '10x' during the pandemic.

Michael Kan
 & Michael Kan Principal Reporter

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WhatsApp is doubling the number of people you can hold a video call with from four to eight. 

“This is going to launch next week,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. On Friday, he held a live stream where he went over his company’s plans to keep people connected during the pandemic. 

The upcoming upgrade to WhatsApp has been a heavily requested feature among users, Zuckerberg added. WhatsApp is one of the few mainstream chat apps that offers end-to-end encryption on video calls, which can prevent your communications from being accessed by hackers, oppressive government regimes and even Facebook itself. 

“So having the ability to have your calls not limited to four people, but now include eight, is a big deal during this period,” Zuckerberg said. 

It’ll also give people an alternative to Zoom, which has skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic. The product can let you simultaneously view up to 49 people during a video session, which is far more than WhatsApp can do. However, Zoom doesn’t offer complete end-to-end encryption. The company will generate and then manage the encryption keys for your meetings over its own servers. (That all said, Zoom says it doesn’t monitor or store your video meetings, unless the session is recorded by the host.) 

Zuckerberg went on to add that the company is seeing a surge of video calls over WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger due to everyone staying at home during the pandemic. “In many countries, we’ve seen the number of calls has doubled during this period,” he said. “For some specific categories like group video chat, we’ve seen the number of calls go up by 10x or more.”

The pandemic is also steering users to buy Portal, the company’s line of smart display/video conferencing products. 

“Sales of Portal devices have grown by more than 10x,” he added. “And we’re working as hard as we can to make more of them for all of you, who are trying to get their hands on one during this period.”

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About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

My Experience

I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

The Best Tech I've Had:

  • My first video game console: a Nintendo Famicom
  • I loved my Sega Saturn despite PlayStation's popularity.
  • The iPod Video I received as a gift in college
  • Xbox 360 FTW
  • The Galaxy Nexus was the first smartphone I was proud to own.
  • The PC desktop I built in 2013, which still works to this day.

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