WhatsApp is opening one more feature to people who don’t use WhatsApp. Its Events feature, which has lived inside group chats since 2024, can now send invitations to anyone with a link, even people who have never installed the app.
The change addresses an obvious limitation. Until now, organising a birthday dinner or a family gathering through WhatsApp only worked if everyone on the guest list was already in the right group chat, which isn’t always the case. With the update, organisers can create an event, add a cover photo, and generate an invitation link to share through any channel. People without a WhatsApp account can open the link, see the event details and RSVP from the web, without downloading the app or signing up.
Organisers also get a dedicated place to manage it all. A new Events Home, found under Settings, collects every past and upcoming event in one list, covering both events you’ve created and ones you’ve been invited to, so you no longer have to scroll back through chat history to find a date or address. From there, hosts can design custom invitations, see who has responded, schedule reminders for guests and allow plus-ones.
Meta is emphasising privacy, and some of the safeguards are sensible. Hosts’ phone numbers are hidden from guests they don’t know, which matters when an invite link can be passed around beyond the original guest list. Guests without WhatsApp only see the event’s location after they RSVP, a small but useful protection against a link ending up in the wrong hands. Meta notes that personal messages and calls remain end-to-end encrypted, but it hasn’t said whether the same protection covers invitation pages or the RSVP details non-users submit, or what information WhatsApp collects from people who reply without an account.
The competitive target is clear. Partiful has become a popular way for younger users to organise parties, and Apple launched its own Invites app last year. WhatsApp has an advantage neither of them has: it’s already on billions of phones, and in markets like the UAE and the wider Middle East it is often the default way families and friends communicate. For many hosts, the planning already happens in WhatsApp, so moving the invitation there too is a small step.
This also follows a recent pattern. Last month WhatsApp began letting people join voice and video calls without an account, and Events is the next step in making the app useful to people who don’t use it.
The updated Events experience is rolling out to everyone over the coming weeks. The question is how long Meta will keep these features account-free before it starts using them to bring new users onto WhatsApp.