What's Different About Roblox in 2026? Every Major Change Explained

1. Friend cap raised from 200 to 1,000

This is the change most likely to affect day-to-day Roblox players. For nearly the entire history of the platform, accounts could have a maximum of 200 friends. In November 2024 Roblox announced a phased rollout: the cap was first raised to 250, then incrementally increased throughout 2025. By 2026 the full 1,000-connection cap is live globally.

The block-list cap was raised to 1,000 in parallel. For tools like FriendPath that traverse the friend graph, this means hub accounts (KreekCraft, DenisDaily, @david.baszucki) can accumulate substantially more connections than before, which over time should make average path lengths even shorter than the historical ~4-hop average.

2. "Friends" renamed to "Connections"

Alongside the cap raise, Roblox quietly rebranded the entire "Friends" system to "Connections." The functionality is identical — mutual friend requests, friend lists, the same APIs — but the user-facing label and some internal documentation now use the word "Connections" instead. The Roblox Fandom Wiki even has a dedicated Connections page alongside the older Friends page. The rebrand reflects the larger cap (1,000 is too many for "friends" to feel meaningful) and the platform's positioning as more LinkedIn-style than Facebook-style for older users.

For developers: Player:GetFriendsAsync() and Player:IsFriendsWith() still work and weren't renamed. The change is mostly cosmetic at the API level. See our post on Player:IsFriendsWith() and its limits.

3. Mandatory age verification (January 2026)

Starting in January 2026, Roblox made age verification mandatory for access to communication features — experience chat, voice chat, and party chat. Users have to complete a facial age-estimation check (provided by Persona) before chat functions unlock. Roblox shipped this with a "fast-follow" roadmap of refinements to address the rollout issues that came up in the first weeks.

This is largely a response to the UK Online Safety Act (full post: The UK Online Safety Act and Roblox) and similar regulations passing in the EU, Australia, and several US states.

4. Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts (June 2026)

On April 13, 2026, David Baszucki announced two new account types rolling out globally in early June 2026:

• Roblox Kids: for ages 5–8. Strictest content filters, no chat, no friend requests from strangers, robust parental controls. Full Roblox press release here.
• Roblox Select: for ages 9–15. A middle-ground tier with restricted chat options and parent-managed content ratings.
• Standard accounts: now effectively the "16+" tier. Requires age verification.

The system replaces the previous "Under 13" / "13+" binary with a more granular age-tiered approach. The GamerMarkt guide to Roblox Kids and Select accounts has a complete feature-by-feature breakdown.

5. Stricter developer requirements (May 19, 2026)

Starting May 19, 2026, Roblox introduced new requirements for making games public to all users. Per Bloxy News's reporting, developers now need:

• Completed age check (facial estimation or ID)
• ID verification
• Two-factor authentication enabled
• An active Roblox Plus subscription

This significantly raises the bar for new developers and is generally seen as a response to ongoing moderation concerns. It also pushes more revenue toward the Roblox Plus subscription tier.

6. Friends API restructuring

In early 2025, Roblox announced updates to the Friends API including deprecation of the IsOnline property in GetFriendsAsync responses. Developers using the property in their games have to migrate to the dedicated GetFriendsOnlineAsync method.

For external tools that query Roblox's public friends API (including FriendPath), the underlying behavior is unchanged — friend lists are still returned the same way. Only the Lua client-side API surface changed.

7. UK accounts: friend lists still hidden

The big 2023 change — UK accounts having their friend lists hidden under the Online Safety Act — is still in effect in 2026. There were some discussion in early 2026 about whether Roblox might be banned outright in the UK if compliance issues continued, but the platform has remained operational by tightening other safety features. The friend-list restriction itself was extended rather than rolled back. Read our full UK Online Safety Act post for context and the workaround.

8. International growth (especially Brazil)

Not a "feature change" but worth noting: Roblox's user base composition shifted significantly in 2025–2026. Brazil now accounts for ~18% of Roblox players (up from low single digits a few years ago), making it the #2 market behind the United States. India, Indonesia, and the Philippines are also growing rapidly. This is why we now publish a Portuguese version of our David Baszucki post and a Spanish version — the audience genuinely is global.

What it all means

The cumulative effect of these changes: Roblox in 2026 is more regulated, more age-stratified, and more "social network" than it was in 2024. The 1,000-friend cap and "Connections" rename push the platform toward LinkedIn-style social density. The age verification and Kids/Select accounts respond to mounting global regulatory pressure. And the developer-side tightening reflects ongoing maturation of the creator ecosystem.

For tools that work with Roblox's friend graph — including FriendPath — the practical effect is mostly positive: more connections per user means denser graph, which means shorter average paths and faster searches. The UK-account restriction is the one persistent friction point, and we've documented the workaround in our UK Online Safety Act post.

Sources for further reading

• Roblox official: Introducing Roblox Kids and Select Accounts (April 2026)
• March 26, 2026 DevForum age-check-to-chat update
• Bloxy News on the May 19, 2026 developer requirement changes
• Eneba's summary of the 2026 update package
• Priori Data's 2026 Roblox user statistics