Letterboxd outage locks users out of accounts worldwide
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
Letterboxd, the popular film review and social media platform, suffered a major outage on Sunday that locked users out of their accounts worldwide. Those attempting to log in via the app or website were met with error messages or repeatedly returned to the login screen, leaving the cinephile community unable to access their profiles for a period on 9 August 2026.
The outage began around 6am PT, with more than 1,000 users reporting problems via DownDetector. Letterboxd acknowledged the disruption on Instagram, saying its team was "aware of an outage" and working to restore access, and no further updates followed as coverage of the incident died down. The platform, founded in 2011 and based in Auckland, New Zealand, has grown rapidly in recent years, surpassing 30 million users by June after adding 10 million in 2025 alone, and has reportedly been in early acquisition talks with parties including Netflix, Sony Pictures, Paramount Skydance, TPG and Alexis Ohanian.
- Letterboxd suffered a worldwide login outage on Sunday 9 August 2026
- Over 1,000 users reported issues via DownDetector
- Site has 30m+ users and is reportedly in early sale talks
New here? Start with this
Letterboxd is a social network built around films, where members log what they've watched, rate and review titles, and follow other users' lists — similar in spirit to Goodreads but for cinema. It was set up in 2011 and is run out of Auckland, New Zealand, and has become especially popular with dedicated film fans, growing to more than 30 million users after a sharp rise in new sign-ups over the past year or so.
The story concerns a technical failure that stopped people logging into the app and website, rather than any change to the service itself. Outages of this kind, where a company's servers or login systems stop working properly, can affect users anywhere at once and are usually tracked by sites such as DownDetector, which collect user-submitted reports of problems.
The timing matters because Letterboxd has recently drawn interest from larger media and investment firms reportedly exploring a possible acquisition, which has put extra attention on how the platform is run and how reliable it is at a time when its user base has been expanding quickly.
More coverage
Business Entertainment Film Markets Software Technology
Read the full article at the source →
Originally published by Variety as “Letterboxd Goes Down, Leaving Users Locked Out of Their Accounts”.