The New Teams client is the latest version of Microsoft Teams used for chat, meetings, and Teams Voice. New Teams opens and joins meetings faster, uses less computer memory, and lets people work across different organizations more easily. For more details about New Teams, please refer to What is the new Teams? (Microsoft Learn)

The look and feel is similar between the New Teams client and Classic Teams. However, when the New Teams client is installed, it will not copy custom backgrounds people have added to Teams. New backgrounds can be added using the steps at Change your background in Microsoft Teams meetings - Microsoft Support.

The New Teams client will install automatically starting Thursday, January 4. As the New Teams client installs and is ready to use, people may see the following message:

DoIT recommends people consult their local IT support before switching to the new Teams client but there is a toggle available in the upper left corner of "classic" Teams that people can use to start using the New Teams client now. When the option is toggled to use New Teams, the new version will download and install on its own.