Discord is rolling out age verification globally from March 2026, automatically switching all accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless users show they are adults.
Users not verified as adults will lose access to age-restricted servers and channels, will not be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels and will see content filters for anything Discord flags as graphic or sensitive.
They will receive warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, whereas DMs from such users will be filtered into a separate inbox.
A government ID might still be required in the global rollout, with Discord saying that to remove the new teen-by-default limits, “users can choose to use facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to Discord’s vendor partners, with more options coming in the future.”
The first option uses AI to analyse a user’s video selfie, which Discord says never leaves the user’s device.
If the selfie-based age group estimate is wrong, users can appeal it or verify it with a photo of an identity document instead.
That document will be verified by a third-party vendor, but Discord says images of those documents “are deleted quickly; in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.”
