We examine determinants and consequences of firms’ choice to conduct ‘virtual’ annual shareholder meetings. Virtual meetings are more frequent among firms with more retail shareholders and firms traditionally more engaged with shareholders, consistent with the stated objective to increase shareholder participation. We find little evidence that firms choose this format to avoid shareholders’ scrutiny. We then examine the effect of the virtual format on the level of activity at the meeting. Textual analysis of transcripts suggests that virtual meetings are overall shorter, with shorter business presentations, lower likelihood of questions from shareholders and fewer questions. They also exhibit a more negative tone, both during management’s presentation and the Q&A session. These differences hold (i) when comparing virtual-only meetings to past in-person meetings from the same firm, and (ii) when controlling for various firm and meeting characteristics, consistent with those differences being a result of the format itself. Finally, the virtual format does not appear to affect market-based proxies for the meeting’s information content (such as abnormal trading volume and absolute returns). Overall, it appears that virtual meetings exhibit less activity, consistent with critics’ concerns, but such reduced activity does not appear to cause a loss in information content. We discuss a number of potential explanations for our preliminary findings.