BigBlueButton Migration 2026

Our BigBlueButton video conferencing system meet.gwdg.de has served us well since the pandemic began, completing several million hours of meetings; however, it is now showing its age. As part of a major upgrade, not only will BigBlueButton and the the Greenlight room management system be upgraded to version 3, but the infrastructure will also get a major overhaul and be brought up to date. The entire service will be rebuilt as part of the AcademicCloud.

Here are the most important points:

• The new address is: https://meet.academiccloud.de/
• The official launch is planned for the end of February 2026. The new service can be tested immediately.
• BigBlueButton has been updated to version 3. The room management system “Greenlight” has been updated to version 3.7.
• Institutions can now purchase BigBlueButton more easily via AcademicCloud (new pricing model).
• User groups with access to meet.gwdg.de will also be able to use meet.academiccloud.de for the time being.
• Old rooms and recordings will not be lost (see below).

Since there are tens of thousands of rooms and recordings in the old meet.gwdg.de system, we cannot simply shut it down. The transition will take place in several steps:

• On a specific date (planned for the end of February), all accounts, rooms, and recordings will be copied from meet.gwdg.de to meet.academiccloud.de. All rooms and recordings will then exist independently of each other in both systems.
• All users are strongly encouraged to update their appointments or bookmarks accordingly and to use only the new system after the day of the migration.
• Existing links to old rooms and recordings will remain valid for the time being. Meetings can still be started on the old system. However, changes to rooms or recordings in the old system will no longer be transferred to the new system after the migration.
• At a later date (planned for June 2026), the old system will be permanently shut down. To ensure that existing links to rooms or recordings remain valid, redirects from the old meet.gwdg.de addresses to the new ones on meet.academiccloud.de will be set up.

Existing integrations with other systems such as StudIP or Moodle will be gradually migrated. No action is required on the part of users. Administrators of these connected systems should contact us at us to receive new login credentials.