If you’re like me, it’s probably been a hot minute since you’ve used or thought about Meetup. Formerly both Facebook and Twitter, the website, which was designed to help people organize personal events, has changed hands several times in recent years.
In 2017, founder Scott Heiferman sold it to WeWork, which spun off a few years later before declaring bankruptcy in 2023. As of 2024, Bending Spoons, the Italian tech company probably best known for buying Evernote in 2022, has been using Meetup.
After the pandemic, the platform saw something of a resurgence. As of late 2025, Gen Z and younger Millennials make up 40 percent of Meetup’s active users and represent its most engaged group of users. This year, the app also saw a 20 percent year-over-year increase in new signups. Going into 2026, Bending Spoons hopes to build on that momentum with a redesign of the Meetup mobile app.
The new interface, rolling out today, brings the Android and iOS app into line with Meetup’s newly redesigned website. Across the app, users can expect updated fonts, new colorful icons and better spacing. The goal of the redesign is to make the app “livelier, more fun and more modern than ever,” said Chiara Vivaldi, Meetup’s product lead. He adds that the redesigned app retains all the key features found in the previous version, while making those easier to find. For example, users can access their profile and groups directly from the app’s home page.
Besides making Meetup feel more modern, Bending Spoon is using the redesign to strengthen the foundation for a series of improvements it plans to roll out in the coming months.
Soon, Meetup users will be able to see the breakdown of people registered for the event. (Bending spoons)
According to Vivaldi, another important priority is to give people, especially women, more confidence to attend the events listed on Meetup. When you navigate to the event page in the new app, you’ll see a wide gender and age breakdown of users who have signed up to be there. Additionally, new and rich user profiles allow people to get a better idea of who exactly they might meet if they decide to go. Bending Spoons is also introducing a new Super Organizer badge that it plans to award to the platform’s top event planners. It is designed to indicate to users that the person who put together the event considers community building as important.
Together, Vivaldi says these features are designed to reduce the tension of attending events where you may not know anyone, and it’s something the company plans to build on in the future.
At the same time, Bending Spoons plans to make it easier for organizers to use Meetup. Starting early next year, the company will combine two separate Meetup apps — currently, the company keeps separate ones for members and organizers. Vivaldi says planners can expect the integrated app to include all the features they rely on, plus a few enhancements. For example, Vivaldi’s team is working to make QR-based ticketing the norm for check-in and attendance tracking. He says the move to a single app is due to the fact that 75 percent of Meetup organizers started out as a member.
“[Organizers] they are part of the community. They want to be in the action, so having them within the same app helps with that. They can enter conversations, look at other events, and make everything feel natural,” said Vivaldi. Meanwhile, if you’ve used Meetup, you can download the redesigned app from the App and Google Play stores.
