Hybrid gets a reputation for being costly. Two sets of infrastructure, a venue, a platform, AV setup for both in-room and remote participants. It adds up, and for many governance teams that cost calculation is enough to rule it out before the conversation has really started.
But the assumption that hybrid is inherently more expensive than in-person deserves a closer look. And so does the assumption that cost is the right lens to apply first. If you are working through this decision, our guide on choosing the right meeting format covers the full picture.
For most organizations, meeting format used to be a simple decision. In-person was the default, virtual was for exceptional circumstances, and hybrid was something larger listed companies experimented with. The pandemic changed that almost overnight.
Organizations that had never considered remote participation were running fully virtual AGMs and member meetings within weeks. Some found it worked better than expected. Others found it exposed gaps in their stakeholder engagement that in-person had been quietly masking for years.
Adoption of virtual and hybrid formats varies considerably by market. In the US, around one in four annual meetings were virtual-only in 2024. In Europe, Germany has seen the fastest adoption following legislative changes in 2022, with 63.2% of AGMs held virtually in 2025. The direction of travel is clear, even if the pace varies significantly by market.
What emerged from that period was not a clean shift to virtual. It was a much more complex landscape where organizations were genuinely reassessing what format served their stakeholders best, often for the first time. That conversation has not gone away. If anything it has become more consequential as shareholder expectations have risen, costs have come under greater scrutiny and the range of practical options has continued to expand.
The expense associated with hybrid meetings is largely inherited from how organizations approach the in-room element. External venues, catering, travel for board members, production-level AV. These costs exist regardless of whether remote participants join or not. They are in-person costs, not hybrid costs.
When organizations move to hybrid, they tend to keep the same in-room setup and add a platform on top. That is where the perception of hybrid as expensive comes from. But it is not the only way to do it.
Hosting in your own offices rather than an external venue removes one of the largest cost lines immediately. Scaling back catering and logistics follows naturally. The platform cost, which often feels like the new expense, is frequently offset by what you save elsewhere.
The question is not whether you can afford hybrid. It is whether you are approaching the in-room element in a way that makes the numbers work
Cost is only one part of the equation. The more important question is what happens to participation when you remove the remote option.
For organizations with widely distributed stakeholder bases, shareholders spread across multiple geographies, members who work shifts or cannot travel easily, investors based overseas, in-person only means a significant proportion of eligible participants simply cannot attend. That is not just an accessibility issue; it affects the representativeness of the meeting itself.
Hybrid addresses that directly. When both channels are well designed and genuinely equivalent, organizations consistently see broader participation than in-person alone delivers. For governance teams where engagement levels and shareholder or member turnout matter, that is a meaningful consideration alongside the cost calculation.
The biggest reason hybrid falls short in practice has nothing to do with cost or format. It is execution.
When online participants cannot ask questions on the same basis as those in the room, when the remote experience feels like a livestream rather than genuine participation, when technical issues go unaddressed and board members forget there is an audience joining digitally, the format fails. Not because hybrid does not work, but because it was not executed with both audiences in mind.
The organizations that run hybrid well tend to focus on three things:
None of this means hybrid is the right answer for every organization. The right format depends on your stakeholders, your budget, your governance obligations and what you are trying to achieve. Virtual is the most cost-efficient format at scale. In-person remains the right choice for organizations with concentrated, local stakeholder bases where face-to-face accountability genuinely matters.
But for organizations that have been ruling hybrid out on cost grounds alone, without examining where those costs actually come from or what the participation trade-offs of the alternatives look like, it is worth revisiting the assumption.
Are you working out what is right for your organization? Our guide covers the full picture: the trade-offs between in-room, hybrid and virtual, the regulatory picture across key markets, and a framework to help you work out what fits your specific situation.
Download the meeting format guide
If you are also considering format decisions for elections, our companion elections guide covers the same ground specifically for election administrators.