Connecting to Libera.Chat

Libera.Chat can be accessed using an IRC client.

Connect to Libera.Chat with TLS at irc.libera.chat on port 6697.

Additional regional and address-specific hostnames are available:

Additional ports are available:

Accessing Libera.Chat Via TLS

Libera.Chat provides TLS client access on all servers, on ports 6697, 7000 and 7070. Users connecting over TLS will be given user mode +Z, and is using a secure connection will appear in WHOIS (a 671 numeric).

In order to verify the server certificates on connection, some additional work may be required. First, ensure that your system has an up-to-date set of root CA certificates. On most linux distributions this will be in a package named something like ca-certificates. Many systems install these by default, but some (such as FreeBSD) do not. For FreeBSD, the package is named ca_root_nss, which will install the appropriate root certificates in /usr/local/share/certs/ca-root-nss.crt.

Certificate verification will generally only work when connecting to libera.chat. If your client thinks the server’s certificate is invalid, make sure you are connecting to irc.libera.chat rather than any other name that leads to Libera.Chat.

For most clients this should be sufficient. If not, you can download the root certificate from LetsEncrypt.

Client TLS certificates are also supported, and may be used for identification to services. For instructions, see our guide on CertFP. If you have connected with a client certificate, has client certificate fingerprint f1ecf46714198533cda14cccc76e5d7114be4195 (showing your certificate’s SHA512 fingerprint in place of f1ecf46…) will appear in WHOIS (a 276 numeric).

Accessing Libera.Chat Via Tor

Libera.Chat is reachable via Tor using our onion service.

Configuration requirements with details below:

• Update torrc configuration file to map to the onion service.
• Configure your client to use your Tor SOCKS proxy (typically localhost:9050).
• Configure public-key (not plain) SASL authentication.
• Connect to palladium.libera.chat.

# torrc entry for libera.chat onion service
MapAddress palladium.libera.chat libera75jm6of4wxpxt4aynol3xjmbtxgfyjpu34ss4d7r7q2v5zrpyd.onion

This service requires public-key SASL authentication using either the EXTERNAL or ECDSA-NIST256P-CHALLENGE (but not PLAIN) mechanisms. See our guide on setting up CertFP for more information.

Some clients lack SOCKS4a or later support. In this case you will need to change your torrc file to map a private IP address to the onion service address instead and disable TLS hostname verification in your client. Onion service names securely identify a service. The connection will still be secure.

The default tor configuration only optimizes some ports for long-lived connections: For IRC, only 6667 and 6697. If you use a different port, you may face frequent disconnects unless you update LongLivedPorts in your torrc file.

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