Are you old enough that you spent your time on IRC back in the days? Do you like your chat infrastructure free of billionaire influence? Do you have free time? Are you experiencing nostalgia? If you answered yes to one or more of the questions above, here’s what it takes to connect to the IRC network in 2025.

The IRCv3 protocol update aims to fix the (let’s be honest) awful user experience of IRC. They even have a draft for server-side chat history! Meanwhile, the Open-Source community congregates on libera.chat, and if you're looking for channels on different networks, Netsplit.de is a great resource.