Private Channel

A private channel in Microsoft Teams is a channel visible only to a subset of the parent team's members. Membership is a strict subset — you can't add anyone to a private channel who isn't already in the parent team. Each private channel provisions its own SharePoint site (not just a folder in the team's site), giving it isolated storage, permissions, and lifecycle. Used for confidential subgroups within a wider team — leadership-only discussions inside a department team, HR-only conversations in a HR team. Different from shared channels, which can include external members. A team can have up to 30 private channels.