Discord Dev News: Buildathon Ends, New SDK Guides
:ddevs: Discord Developer News - January 2026
Hey devs! Welcome to the January edition of Discord Developer News. As we kick off the new year, we're excited to share important updates about our Buildathon finale, new learning resources, and new account linking capabilities. Let's dive in!
๐ Final Stretch for our DDevs 2025 Buildathon
Time is almost up! Our Buildathon wraps up on January 9th. Submit your bot, activity, or game before the deadline. Our favorites in each category will be announced on January 23.
- ๐พย Check out the buildathon-submit channel in DDevs to submit
๐ฌ Watch Our 2025 Year in Review Event
Missed our recent 2025 Changelog live event? We've got you covered! Watch the full recording to catch up on all the updates from this year and what weโre thinking about for 2026.
- ๐ฅ Watch the 2025 Changelog recording
๐ Learn to Build with the Social SDK in Unity
New to building Discord-integrated games? We've partnered with Unity Learn to create a comprehensive course that teaches you how to build games with the Discord Social SDK in Unity from the ground up.
- ๐ Take the Unity Learn course
- ๐ฅย Watch a live demonstration of the course
๐ New Social SDK Guide: Account Linking from Discord
We've added a new guide showing how to enable account linking entry points within the Discord client. With Social SDK 1.6+, Discord can now display "Link your account" prompts and buttons throughout the client to encourage players to connect their game accounts, leading to higher linking rates and better social engagement.
- ๐ Read the full guide
- ๐ ๏ธ Explore the new account linking developer tools
๐จ Stay Connected with Discord Developers in 2026
Join our Discord community and stay up to date on your preferred platform!
- :ddevs: Join the Discord Developers server
- โ๏ธ Subscribe to our Discord Developers email newsletter
- :youtube: Follow @DiscordDevelopers on YouTube
- :linkedin: Follow Discord Developers on LinkedIn
glhf!
Your Discord Developer team
Discord Developer 2025 Year in Review: Social SDK, New Components, ...

Join the Discord DevRel team for our final DDevs Change Log event of 2025! Weโre recapping a massive year for the developer community and looking ahead at whatโs coming in 2026.
In this video, we cover:
- Discord Checkpoint 2025: A look at the massive stats across the platform, including over 700 billion messages sent this year.
- Developer...