A "Communities" feature has appeared in the beta version of Telegram for Android (12.9) – a way to combine several thematic groups under a common name and photo.
The group owner can create a community or add a chat to an existing one through the group settings – the option is called "Add Group to a Community". By default, any community member can add their group there, but the owner has the right to change this mode. Then ordinary users will only be able to suggest chats, and the final decision will remain with the administrators.
Each chat within a community can be public or hidden. Public is available to all community members, hidden – only to those invited directly.
By joining any chat in a community, the user is automatically considered a member of the community itself, but they are not added to other groups – only given the opportunity to view them. In the dialogue list, all community chats are displayed separately by default, but administrators can enable grouping into a single element.
For now, the feature is only available on the test server. Only chats can be linked to communities. Linking channels is mentioned in the client code, but it does not work at the moment, and whether it will appear in the release is unknown.