Omegle closed in 2023 and may return: what we know

Omegle, the site that made talking to a random stranger a one-click habit, shut down on 8 November 2023. Its founder closed it rather than keep running it under the cost and pressure of fighting misuse.

That may not be the end of the name. In May 2026 the omegle.com domain passed to a new owner, and the address now shows a page announcing that Omegle is launching soon. There is no launch date yet, and nothing has been published about who will run it day to day or how it will handle moderation and age checks. A relaunch would be a new service under an old name, not the original Omegle coming back. When it opens, we will review it like any other site.

The closure did not end random chat. It scattered it. Some people moved to older rivals that had been running alongside Omegle for years, some to newer video roulette sites, and some to text chat rooms and communities where conversations last longer than one click.

It also created a wave of sites that borrow the name. Many new chat sites put Omegle in their title, copy its layout or call themselves the new Omegle to catch people searching for it. None of them is Omegle, and the ones that lean hardest on the name are not always the ones that run the chat best. On Chatlista we flag clear brand imitation and do not list sites whose main draw is someone else's name.

When you pick a replacement, look past the name. Check whether you can start without an account, whether there is a report and block button, how heavy the ads are and whether the site pushes you towards paid filters or another domain. Our reviews note each of these, and the score weighs moderation and privacy alongside how lively a site is.

If you want the closest thing to the old experience, start with the random match category in our video chat list. If what you miss is the text-only side of Omegle, the text chat list includes one-to-one stranger chats as well as room-based sites where you can stay in one conversation for a while.