Last updated: April 2026
If you want to automate certain parts of your SharePoint Online provisioning process, or simply need a one-time creation of many sites, you probably want to automate everything with PowerShell! But in order to create the new sites with the intended template, you need to know the right template ID that needs to be passed through PowerShell. So this blog post is a list of all of the different SharePoint Online Site Template IDs you will need for either creating a large number of sites, or maybe just creating reports of your SharePoint Online environment!
Pro tip: You can always retrieve the latest list of available templates directly from your own tenant by running Get-SPOWebTemplate in the SharePoint Online Management Shell, or Get-PnPWebTemplates in PnP PowerShell. This is a good way to double-check which templates are currently available to you.
Modern SharePoint Sites
| Template ID | Title | Description / Additional Info |
|---|---|---|
| STS#3 | Team site (no Microsoft 365 group) | A site with no connection to a Microsoft 365 Group. |
| SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0 | Communication site | Publish dynamic, beautiful content to people in your organization to keep them informed and engaged on topics, events, or projects. |
| GROUP#0 | Microsoft 365 Group associated Team Site | For Reporting Only – You cannot create sites with this template. |
| POINTPUBLISHINGPERSONAL#0 | Delve Blog | For Reporting Only – Delve and Delve Blogs have been retired (Delve was fully retired in December 2024). You may still see these in your tenant reports for historical sites. |
| SPSPERS#10 | OneDrive for Business personal Site | For Reporting Only – Use the Request-SPOPersonalSite cmdlet to pre-provision a OneDrive for Business site. |
| RedirectSite#0 | Redirect Site | Placeholder template for the old URL when you rename the Site URL. This is for reporting only and those sites are only created by Microsoft programmatically. |
| TEAMCHANNEL#0 | Teams Private Channel Site | Lightweight site collection provisioned for each Teams Private Channel. This is for reporting only, and not for manual provisioning through SharePoint Online. |
| TEAMCHANNEL#1 | Teams Shared Channel Site | Lightweight site collection provisioned for each Teams Shared Channel. This is for reporting only, and not for manual provisioning through SharePoint Online. The shared channel site inherits the sensitivity label of the parent team. |
As you can see, while there are 9 different “modern” templates, only two of them (STS#3 and SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0) can really be used for site creation. The other seven are for reporting purposes only. To use those templates, you can use the New-SPOSite) PowerShell cmdlet as in the example below:
New-SPOSite -Title "TemplateTest - 01" -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Test123 -Template "STS#3" -Owner vlad@contoso.com -StorageQuota 1024
Modern SharePoint Sites – PnP PowerShell
If you prefer to use PnP PowerShell to automate things, this is the list of sites you can use!
Important: The old SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline module has been retired and archived. The replacement is PnP.PowerShell, which is cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and requires PowerShell 7.4 or newer. You also need to register your own Microsoft Entra ID application for authentication. See the PnP PowerShell documentation for setup instructions.
To install the current module:
Install-Module PnP.PowerShell
| Site Type | Title | Description / Additional Info |
|---|---|---|
| CommunicationSite | Communication site | Publish dynamic, beautiful content to people in your organization to keep them informed and engaged on topics, events, or projects. |
| TeamSite | Microsoft 365 Group (including a Team Site) | Creates a Microsoft 365 Group together with its team site! |
| TeamSiteWithoutMicrosoft365Group | Team site (no Microsoft 365 Group) | Creates a modern team site without a connected Microsoft 365 Group (equivalent to STS#3). |
To create a site using those templates, first connect to your tenant and then use the New-PnPSite PowerShell cmdlet as in the examples below:
# Connect to SharePoint Online (requires your registered Entra ID App)
Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://tenant.sharepoint.com -ClientId "your-app-client-id" -Interactive
# Create a Communication Site
New-PnPSite -Type CommunicationSite -Title Contoso -Url https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/contoso
# Create a Team Site with Microsoft 365 Group
New-PnPSite -Type TeamSite -Title 'Team Contoso' -Alias contoso
# Create a Team Site without a Microsoft 365 Group
New-PnPSite -Type TeamSiteWithoutMicrosoft365Group -Title Contoso -Url https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/contoso
Using the New-PnPSite PowerShell cmdlet, you can also specify which type of Communication Site you want out of the three default ones by providing the name in the -SiteDesign parameter as in the example below.
New-PnPSite -Type CommunicationSite -Title Contoso -Url https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/contoso -SiteDesign Showcase
Lastly, if you want to use PnP to create any of the templates in the Modern SharePoint Sites section (ex: STS#3) you can use the New-PnPTenantSite PowerShell cmdlet as in the example below:
New-PnPTenantSite -Title Contoso -Url https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/contoso -Owner user@example.org -TimeZone 4 -Template STS#3
How to retrieve template IDs from your tenant
If you want to get the full list of available templates directly from your own tenant, you can run the following commands. This is useful to verify which templates are available or to check if Microsoft has added any new ones.
Using the SharePoint Online Management Shell:
# Connect to SharePoint Online Admin Center
Connect-SPOService -Url "https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com"
# Get all available site templates
Get-SPOWebTemplate | Select-Object Name, Title, Description | Sort-Object Name
Using PnP PowerShell:
# Connect using PnP PowerShell
Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://contoso.sharepoint.com" -ClientId "your-app-client-id" -Interactive
# Get web templates available in the site
Get-PnPWebTemplates | Select-Object Name, Title | Sort-Object Name
A note on custom site templates (site designs)
Beyond the base template IDs listed above, SharePoint Online also supports custom site templates (previously called site designs). These allow you to define a set of actions (like applying a theme, creating lists, or setting navigation) that run automatically when a new site is created using one of the base templates. If you are provisioning sites at scale, custom site templates are a great way to standardize your environment. You can learn more about them in the Microsoft documentation on site templates and site scripts.
Classic SharePoint Sites
Important update for 2026: Microsoft is actively retiring classic SharePoint components in SharePoint Online. SharePoint Add-Ins and Azure ACS authentication will stop working on April 2, 2026. Creation of new classic publishing sites has been blocked since September 2025, and classic SharePoint Alerts will be fully retired by July 2026. If you still have classic sites in your environment, it is strongly recommended to start planning your migration to the modern experience.
| **Template ID** | **Title** | **Description** |
| STS#0 | Classic Team Site | A place to work together with a group of people. |
| APPCATALOG#0 | App Catalog Site | A site for sharing apps for SharePoint and Office |
| BDR#0 | Document Center | A site to centrally manage documents in your enterprise |
| BICenterSite#0 | Business Intelligence Center | A site for presenting Business Intelligence content in SharePoint. |
| BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0 | Publishing Portal | A starter site hierarchy for an Internet-facing site or a large intranet portal. This site can be customized easily with distinctive branding. It includes a home page, a sample press releases subsite, a Search Center, and a login page. Typically, this site has many more readers than contributors, and it is used to publish Web pages with approval workflows. **Note:** Creation of new classic publishing sites has been blocked since September 2025. |
| BLOG#0 | Blog (retired) | Classic blog sites have been retired. The ability to create new classic blog sites through the user interface has been turned off. Use Communication sites and news posts instead. |
| COMMUNITY#0 | Community Site | A place where community members discuss topics of common interest. Members can browse and discover relevant content by exploring categories, sorting discussions by popularity or by viewing only posts that have a best reply. Members gain reputation points by participating in the community, such as starting discussions and replying to them, liking posts and specifying best replies. |
| COMMUNITYPORTAL#0 | Community Portal | A site for discovering communities. |
| DEV#0 | Developer Site | A site for developers to build, test and publish apps for Office |
| ENTERWIKI#0 | Enterprise Wiki | A site for publishing knowledge that you capture and want to share across the enterprise. It provides an easy content editing experience in a single location for co-authoring content, discussions, and project management. |
| OFFILE#1 | Records Center | This template creates a site designed for records management. Records managers can configure the routing table to direct incoming files to specific locations. The site also lets you manage whether records can be deleted or modified after they are added to the repository. |
| PRODUCTCATALOG#0 | Product Catalog | A site for managing product catalog data which can be published to an internet-facing site through search. The product catalog can be configured to support product variants and multilingual product properties. The site includes admin pages for managing faceted navigation for products. |
| PROJECTSITE#0 | Project Site | A site for managing and collaborating on a project. This site template brings all status, communication, and artifacts relevant to the project into one place. |
| SRCHCEN#0 | Enterprise Search Center | A site focused on delivering an enterprise-wide search experience. Includes a welcome page with a search box that connects users to four search results page experiences: one for general searches, one for people searches, one for conversation searches, and one for video searches. You can add and customize new results pages to focus on other types of search queries. |
| SRCHCENTERLITE#0 | Basic Search Center | A site focused on delivering a basic search experience. Includes a welcome page with a search box that connects users to a search results page, and an advanced search page. This Search Center will not appear in navigation. |
| visprus#0 | Visio Process Repository | A site for viewing, sharing, and storing Visio process diagrams. It includes a versioned document library and templates for Basic Flowcharts, Cross-functional Flowcharts, and BPMN diagrams. |
While knowing what the classic SharePoint templates are is useful for reporting purposes, I strongly recommend only creating modern SharePoint sites from now on. Do not add any classic SharePoint sites to your environment, as it would add extra content to migrate to modern in the future. With Microsoft actively retiring classic components throughout 2025 and 2026, creating new classic sites is no longer a viable long-term option.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find the template ID of an existing SharePoint site?
You can use PowerShell to check the template of any existing site. With the SharePoint Online Management Shell, run:
Get-SPOSite -Identity "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/yoursite" | Select-Object Template.
With PnP PowerShell, run
Get-PnPWeb | Select-Object WebTemplate, WebTemplateId.
What is the difference between STS#0 and STS#3?
STS#0 is the classic team site template that uses the legacy SharePoint experience with the ribbon interface. STS#3 is the modern team site template without a Microsoft 365 Group connection. For any new sites, you should use STS#3 (or create a group-connected team site) rather than STS#0.
Can I still create classic SharePoint sites in 2026?
Creating new classic publishing sites has been blocked by default since September 2025. While some classic templates like STS#0 may technically still work via PowerShell, Microsoft is actively phasing out all classic SharePoint components. SharePoint Add-Ins and Azure ACS stop working on April 2, 2026, and classic SharePoint Alerts are being retired by July 2026. The recommendation is to only use modern templates.
What is the TEAMCHANNEL#0 template?
TEAMCHANNEL#0 is the template ID for SharePoint sites that are automatically created behind Microsoft Teams private channels. These are lightweight site collections that you will see in your SharePoint admin reports, but they cannot be manually created through SharePoint Online. TEAMCHANNEL#1 is the equivalent template for Teams shared channels.
What happened to the SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline module?
The old SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline module has been retired and archived. It has been replaced by PnP.PowerShell, which is cross-platform and based on .NET 8. The new module requires PowerShell 7.4 or later and requires you to register your own Microsoft Entra ID application for authentication. You can install the new module with: Install-Module PnP.PowerShell.
