Facebook will start testing a new full-screen video feature later in 2026, according to an announcement from Facebook's head, Tom Alison, on July 24, 2026. The test will begin in countries where people already watch a lot of video on Facebook, and it could come to the US in 2027. The Verge

The announcement comes at a tough moment for Facebook's parent company, Meta. The company's own data shows it lost 20 million users in the first three months of 2026. That drop helps explain why Facebook is making several changes at once, each one aimed at a different way people use the app.

On the same day as the video announcement, Facebook launched a new app called Seller. It is designed for people who sell items on Facebook Marketplace, and it works a lot like Craigslist. Earlier in 2026, Facebook released another app called Forum, which is a separate space for Facebook Groups. The idea behind both apps is the same: take a popular feature out of the main Facebook app and give it its own dedicated home.

Facebook is also now offering a free verified badge. You can get it by taking a selfie to confirm your identity. This is different from the paid Meta Verified subscription, which costs at least $11.99 per month. So there are now two levels of verification: one that requires a selfie, and one that requires payment in addition to that.

These changes trace back to something Alison said in an interview with Reuters in May 2024. He said young adults were coming to Facebook mainly for sections like Marketplace and Groups, not for the main feed of posts. Reuters The current plan seems to treat that as the guiding idea: if Marketplace, Groups, and video are what bring people in, each one deserves its own investment.

The full-screen video test is the most noticeable change. It looks a lot like TikTok, where you scroll through videos one at a time on a full screen. Facebook has changed its video format several times before, but this time it is treating video as a main feature rather than something you see inside your regular feed. By starting in countries where people already watch a lot of video, Facebook can test the idea in a lower-risk way before bringing it to the US.

The standalone apps have their own logic. Forum and Seller both assume that a dedicated app can do one job better than the main Facebook app, where Marketplace listings and Group conversations have to compete with everything else. Whether people will actually download and keep using separate apps for these features is an open question, and the 20 million-user loss makes it more urgent.

The free verification badge adds another layer. By letting people prove who they are without paying, Facebook is expanding identity checks across its user base. The paid option still costs $11.99 per month. How Facebook shows the difference between free and paid badges to other users, and whether people will trust that difference, will matter for how well this catches on.

Put together, the video redesign, the two new apps, and the new verification system are a wide-ranging response to a steady decline in users. Losing 20 million people in a single quarter is the kind of number that pushes a company to move fast and try several things at once. Facebook is not betting on one fix. It is trying several, each aimed at a different kind of user.

In my view, there is a genuine risk in the standalone-app approach. The tech industry has seen many times that pulling a feature into its own app works when people care enough about that feature to use it on its own, and fails when people do not think a new download is worth the trouble. Facebook's own history with spinoff apps is mixed. What is different here is that the company is building on features that Alison himself said are the main reasons young adults open Facebook, which at least means the plan is based on real behavior rather than guessing.

The video test, the verification tier, and the standalone apps are all in early stages. None of them is a finished product, and the US may not see the full-screen video feature until 2027 if the international test goes well enough to expand. The pace will depend on how much people engage with the new features in the countries where they launch first, which Facebook has not yet named.

What is clear is that Facebook is reorganizing itself around the things that actually keep people coming back, rather than expecting everyone to start with the main feed. Whether that reorganization can make up for losing 20 million users in a quarter is a question the next several months of Meta's reporting will answer.