How to Restrict Who Can Create Teams in Microsoft Teams

By default, anyone in your organisation can create a team. A few months later you have dozens of teams called Test or Project, and nobody knows which team is for what. With a simple setting you limit who can create teams to a group, such as IT or team leads. This article shows how.

What exactly are you limiting?

A team is a Microsoft 365 group, so you're limiting who can create Microsoft 365 groups. That applies everywhere: Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, Planner and Viva Engage. Admins can always create groups.

Step 1: create a group

In the Microsoft 365 admin center or Entra admin center, create a security group, for example Team creators, and add the people allowed to create teams.

Step 2: the setting with PowerShell

Install the Microsoft.Graph.Beta.Identity.DirectoryManagement module and run:

Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "Directory.ReadWrite.All","Group.Read.All"
$groupId = (Get-MgBetaGroup -Filter "displayName eq 'Team creators'").Id
$setting = Get-MgBetaDirectorySetting | Where-Object DisplayName -eq "Group.Unified"

If the setting doesn't exist yet, create it from the Group.Unified template. Then set EnableGroupCreation to false and GroupCreationAllowedGroupId to your group's ID, and save with Update-MgBetaDirectorySetting. Microsoft provides a ready-made script in the documentation Manage who can create Microsoft 365 Groups.

Restricting Microsoft 365 group creation with PowerShell

Check it

Sign in as a user who is not in the group. In Teams they get a message that it's not allowed, or the option disappears. The change can take up to half an hour.

Prefer not to block outright?

Let everyone create teams, but use a naming policy (Entra ID P1) with a prefix such as TM-.
Clean up unused teams with an expiration policy.
Offer a request form, for example with Forms and Power Automate, that creates a team from the right template.

Nederlandstalige versie: Beperken wie een team mag maken in Microsoft Teams

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Restrict who can create a team in Microsoft Teams