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In this lesson you’ll create a GitHub organization and learn how to centrally manage repositories, teams, and permissions. Organizations provide a shared workspace to manage access, apply governance, and coordinate collaboration across multiple people and projects. Prerequisites:
  • An active GitHub account (personal or business).
  • An email address you can access for verification and invitations.
To get started, open your GitHub account, click your profile image, and select Organizations.
This image shows a GitHub profile page with several repositories listed, including a public template for a game and some private repositories. The user menu is also open on the right side.
Step-by-step: Create an organization
  1. Click Create Organization from the Organizations page. GitHub will present plan options: Free, Team, or Enterprise. Choose the plan that fits your team size and governance needs—Free is often sufficient for small teams and personal projects, while Team and Enterprise add advanced collaboration, security, and compliance features.
The image shows a webpage displaying GitHub's pricing plans for organizations, including Free, Team, and Enterprise options, each with different features and monthly costs.
Quick comparison of organization plans
  1. For this demo, select the Free plan. Enter a unique organization name and a contact email. If the name is already taken, GitHub will prompt you to choose another. You’ll also choose whether the organization belongs to your personal account or a business account.
  2. Verify ownership and confirm details. Depending on account settings, verification may occur via email, SSO, or other methods. You can also invite members during setup; invited users will receive an invitation email that they must accept to join.
This image shows a GitHub confirmation page where a user is prompted to verify their identity, with options to enter a code or receive assistance via email.
Invited members must accept the invitation sent to their email before they appear as members of the organization. Until they accept, invitations will show as pending.
After verification and accepting the Terms of Service, your organization will be created. You can invite additional members later and organize them into teams, assign repository permissions, enforce branch protection rules, and set up issue and PR assignment workflows.
The image shows a GitHub organization page for "Pixelcraft-Studio-kk" with options for managing repositories, permissions, and collaborative tasks. There's a message indicating that two members have been invited.
Repositories and next steps
  • If this is a new organization, the Repositories tab may show a message indicating there are no repositories yet. You can create a new repository directly under the organization or transfer existing repositories into it.
  • Once you have repositories, start by configuring teams and repository permissions, branch protection, code owners, and CI/CD (GitHub Actions) as needed.
The image shows a GitHub organization's repository page with the message "This organization has no repositories."
Resources and further reading
If you choose a paid plan (Team or Enterprise), review billing and SSO/SSO provisioning requirements before upgrading to avoid unexpected costs or access changes.

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