Home · Blog · How to create a poll in Telegram: group, channel and settings
How to create a poll in Telegram: group, channel and settings
A Telegram built-in poll is a vote in a group or channel: a question, answer options and percentages. It takes a couple of taps, and that’s enough for a subscriber vote. Below: how to create a poll on your phone and computer, what settings it has and what it can’t do. At the end: when you need a bot instead of a built-in poll.
Where you can create a poll
A poll can be created in a group and in a channel. In a private chat between two people there’s no Poll button. In a channel, admins publish a poll like a regular post. In a group, a member can send a poll unless polls are disabled in the group’s permissions.
How to create a poll on your phone
- Open the group or channel and tap the paperclip next to the message field.
- Choose Poll.
- Write the question and answer options — up to 12 options.
- Turn on the settings you need: anonymous voting, multiple answers, quiz mode.
- Tap Create — the poll appears in the chat as a message.
How to create a poll on a computer
In Telegram Desktop and the web version, open the chat menu — the three dots in the top right corner — and choose Create poll. The rest is the same: question, options, settings, Create. You can stop the vote from the poll menu: once it’s stopped, no one can vote, but the results remain.
Poll settings
- Anonymous voting. On by default: only the number of people who chose each option is visible. In a public poll you can see who voted for what. In a channel, voting is anonymous.
- Multiple answers. A person can select more than one option.
- Quiz. One option is marked as correct, and an explanation can be shown after answering.
In its spring 2026 update, Telegram added descriptions and images to polls, options added by participants, a ban on changing votes, shuffled options, time limits and results hidden until the poll closes. If you don’t see a setting, update the app.
Polls that work in channels and groups
- Choosing a topic. “What should the next post be about?” — three or four topics as options. Subscribers choose the content themselves, and you see what interests them.
- Time and format. “When is a live stream more convenient: morning, afternoon or evening?” — a poll with multiple answers.
- A new product. “Which flavor should we release next?” — the vote engages people and shows demand in advance.
- Quiz. A question on the channel’s topic with a correct answer and an explanation — it entertains and explains instead of just asking.
A short poll with clear options gets more votes than a long one: one question, up to five options, no joke options that pull votes away.
What to do with the results
Poll results are a reason for the next post: “You chose topic X — here’s the breakdown.” That way subscribers see that their vote changes something and are more willing to answer next time. If the poll is public, the list of voters shows your most active subscribers — but you’ll have to collect that list by hand.
What the built-in poll can’t do
- It doesn’t work in private chats — only in groups and channels.
- One question: the next question doesn’t depend on the answer.
- Answers don’t reach a customer card or CRM: in an anonymous poll you don’t know who voted, and in a public one you have to go through the list by hand.
- There’s no built-in export of answers.
- A bot only sees answers in non-anonymous polls it sent itself — it can’t access someone else’s vote in a channel.
When you need a bot
If the survey is meant to learn about a specific customer — a rating after a purchase, how they found you, what interests them — a bot is more convenient. It asks questions in private messages with buttons, the next question depends on the answer, and each answer is saved to the customer card.
In CHBT, the Customer survey (NPS) and Customer questionnaire templates work this way. A summary by option is in the Survey answers section, and all answers are in the CSV export. A channel post can lead to such a bot with a link like t.me/your_bot?start=opros. Learn more on the survey bot page.
Survey botCustomer survey (NPS) templateHow to make a poll in MAXHow to create a poll in VKTelegram bot constructor