If you need any more motivation to log in and complete your daily Duolingo lessons, then Duolingo Challenges might just give you the nudge you’re looking for!
Challenges have been around for over a year now and have become a firm fixture of the Duolingo experience.
However, they’ve undergone a bit of a revamp recently — and it seems everyone’s challenges are a little bit different…
So in this article, we’ll take a closer look at Duolingo challenges. We’ll go over what they are, how you get them, what you get for completing them, as well as some thoughts about they could be improved.
Let’s get into it!
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What are Duolingo Challenges?
As of July 2022, Duolingo challenges are split into three categories: Daily Quests, Friend Quests and Monthly Challenges.
However, it’s important to point out that Duolingo are doing A LOT of A/B testing at the moment.
So if you don’t have access to some of the stuff below, don’t worry — everyone’s getting a different experience.
Daily Quests
Daily Quests were added to Duolingo challenges in early 2022.
They’re basically a set of 3 random challenges that you have to complete every day to earn gems.


They’re usually pretty easy and can include some of the following:
- Earn XP
- Complete lessons
- Earn a crown
There’s also a weird one where you have to find one of the characters in your lessons.
I’ve been getting loads of questions about how to do this!
Unfortunately, there isn’t really anything you can do, other than show up for as many lessons as possible and hope the character shows up.
And by “show up” I mean they’ll appear in your exercises.
For example, if the challenge is to find Zari 5 times, then the example below will count as one:

See what I mean? You can’t control it. It’s just luck of the draw!
Friends Quests
Friends Quests appeared on Duolingo sometime between May and June 2022.
They’re similar to the daily quests in that they’re random challenges.


However, the biggest difference is that you complete them with one of your Duolingo friends, which Duolingo picks at random, and it refreshes every week.
The challenges I’ve seen so far include earning a certain amount of XP and completing a certain amount of lessons.
It’s a co-operative thing, so you have to share the load between you.
So if the challenge is to complete 30 lessons in 4 days, then you could do 15 lessons each, 10 + 20, 1 + 29 etc.
For completing the challenge, you both get a 30-minute XP Boost and 100 gems.
Monthly Challenges
The third kind of challenge is the monthly challenge.
As of July 2022, the monthly challenges have undergone a pretty big change.
The basic lowdown is this:
- Some users are getting the usual 1000 XP challenge (which we’ll look at shortly)
- Some users are getting a new kind of monthly challenge, which requires them to complete a certain amount of quests
- And others are getting nothing at all!
Since Duolingo launched challenges back in May 2021, they’ve basically looked like this:
Every month, Duolingo drop a brand new challenge, each one with its own special theme. The goal is usually to earn 1000 XP before the month is out.
If you manage to do this, you’ll unlock an exclusive badge!
To find Duolingo Challenges, simply head on over to your lesson tree. There you will find a little icon — either a trophy or the badge for the month’s challenge. It will either be floating in the lesson tree or down in your feature tray.


However, as of July 2022, some users are getting a different kind of monthly challenge…


This is the first monthly challenge that requires something other than 1000 XP.
Instead, you have to complete a certain number of quests before the month is out.
I’ve seen on Reddit that some are required to complete 20 quests, whereas others (like me) need to complete 30.
Not seeing the new challenge?
Don’t worry — I wasn’t either at first.
Make sure you’ve got the latest version of Duolingo installed. Once I did that the July challenge appeared straight away!
How to access Duolingo Challenges
To access Duolingo Challenges, simply navigate to your Challenges dashboard by tapping the little trophy icon in your lesson tree.
Here you will find a list of your current challenges.

To find out more about the monthly challenge, simply tap ‘View challenge’.
Here you will find information about your progress, a recommended daily average, the context of the challenge, and details about what you will earn and why it’s worth completing.

The second tab shows you your completed monthly challenges and will display all of your badges.

What do you get for completing a challenge?
For every daily quest you complete, you’ll earn a chest of gems.
For every friend quest you complete, you’ll earn a chest of gems and an XP Boost.
And when you complete a monthly challenge, you’ll receive an exclusive badge.
This month’s challenge (May 2023) is called Eddy and Junior’s Fishing Trip.
The goal is either to earn 1000 XP or to complete a certain amount of quests before the month is out. For completing this you will earn the Fishing Trip badge.

Badges can only be earned once, so if you don’t hit your target by the end of the month you won’t get another chance to earn it. So time is of the essence!
Once you’ve completed a challenge, the badge will appear in your ‘Completed’ section.
Follow me on Duolingo!
Up for some friendly competition? Then be sure to follow me on Duolingo!
My username is DCiiieee 🙂
(If the link doesn’t work then just type my username into the ‘Search for friends’ bar on the app)
All Duolingo Monthly Challenges so far
So far there have been 25 monthly challenges.
The first challenge was in May 2021: The Hamamatsu Kite Festival Challenge. This is something that has been celebrated in Hamamatsu, Japan for over 450 years!
The second challenge, the 9th Duoversary Challenge, celebrates 9 years since Duolingo first launched to the public.
The third challenge was called Eddy’s Big Race, which celebrated the Summer Olympics in Japan.

August’s challenge was called Oscar’s Duocon Keynote, which was all about getting you ready for Duocon on August 20!

September’s challenge was Junior’s Field Trip, October’s challenge celebrated Halloween with Lily’s Jack-o-lantern, and November’s challenge was Oscar’s Mustache Marathon.
The December challenge was Falstaff’s Big Sleep, and the first challenge of 2022 was Zari’s Sparkly New Year.
The objectives of the pre-July 2022 challenges were exactly the same: earn 1000 XP by the end of the month.
In July 2021, some users got a slightly different format, which broke the challenges down into three tiers: Bronze, Silver and Gold.
To unlock the Bronze badge you needed to earn 500 XP by the end of the month; for Silver, 1000 XP; and for Gold, 2000 XP.

However, Duolingo reverted to the original format of just one badge for 1000 XP in September.
The bronze, silver and gold format was probably just in the spirit of the Olympic challenge back in July — although, knowing how Duolingo like to experiment, I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring it back in future!
Every Duolingo Monthly Challenge in order
- May 2021 – The Hamamatsu Kite Festival
- June 2021 – The 9th Duoversary
- July 2021 – Eddy’s Big Race
- August 2021 – Oscar’s Duocon Keynote
- September 2021 – Junior’s Field Trip
- October 2021 – Lily’s Jack-o-lantern
- November 2021 – Oscar’s Mustache Marathon
- December 2021 – Falstaff’s Big Sleep
- January 2022 – Zari’s Sparkly New Year
- February 2022 – Lin and Lucy’s Lunar New Year
- March 2022 – Vikram’s Garden
- April 2022 – Zari’s Cherry Blossom Picnic
- May 2022 – Bea’s Mindfulness Practice
- June 2022 – A Decade of Duo
- July 2022 – Junior and Eddy’s Beach Trip
- August 2022 – Lily and Zari host Duocon
- September 2022 – Vikram’s Reading Marathon
- October 2022 – Lily’s Halloween Costume
- November 2022 – Duo’s Big Game
- December 2022 – Oscar Goes Ice Skating
- January 2023 – Celebrate the New Year with Duo
- February 2023 – Junior’s Love Letter
- March 2023 – Lily’s Punk Rock Band
- April 2023 – Bea’s Earth Day Celebration
- May 2023 – Eddy and Junior’s Fishing Trip
duolingo badges list
For every challenge, there’s a badge! Here’s the complete list of every single Duolingo badge:
2021
May – The Hamamatsu Kite Festival badge

June 2021 – The 9th Duoversary badge

July 2021 – Eddy’s Big Race badge

August 2021 – Oscar’s Duocon Keynote badge

September 2021 – Junior’s Field Trip badge

October 2021 – Lily’s Jack-o-lantern badge

November 2021 – Oscar’s Mustache Marathon badge

December 2021 – Falstaff’s Big Sleep badge

2022
January 2022 – Zari’s Sparkly New Year badge

February 2022 – Lin and Lucy’s Lunar New Year badge

March 2022 – Vikram’s Garden badge

April 2022 – Zari’s Cherry Blossom Picnic badge

May 2022 – Bea’s Mindfulness Practice badge

June 2022 – A Decade of Duo badge

July 2022 – Junior and Eddy’s Beach Trip badge

August 2022 – Lily and Zari host Duocon badge

September 2022 – Vikram’s Reading Marathon badge

October 2022 – Lily’s Halloween Costume badge

November 2022 – Duo’s Big Game badge

December 2022 – Oscar Goes Ice Skating badge

2023
January 2023 – Duo’s New Year’s Party badge

February 2023 – Junior’s Love Letter badge

March 2023 – Lily’s Punk Rock Band badge

April 2023 – Bea’s Earth Day Celebration badge

The state of Duolingo Challenges [updated: July 2022]
I think I speak for a lot of Duolingo users when I say I’ve got mixed feelings about challenges.
In theory, I think they’re a great idea.
Although your priority should be learning your target language, ultimately it gives you another reason to login and do some lessons.
And given you need to spend lots of time with a language to learn it, this can only be a good thing.
I also think the daily quests are pretty cool, especially for free members who need gems to replenish their hearts.
And the new friend quests are a neat way of connecting with your Duolingo buddies.
I also like what the direction they’re taking with the new monthly challenges.
They were pretty boring before — every month the challenge was exactly the same, just with a different name and theme.
I’m not sure they really motivated anyone to go the extra mile in their lessons.
But now they’re mixing it up with the objectives, it definitely makes things more interesting.
how duolingo could improve challenges
Even so, I think there’s still some room for improvement!
I think the current formula’s fine. Duolingo just need to be a bit more imaginative.
For instance:
- Let learners display their badges on their public profiles
- Bring back the challenge tiers from Summer 2021, then…
- Offer different rewards for each tier. These could include:
- Keep mixing up the monthly objectives. It looks like Duolingo are starting to head in this direction, so hopefully each monthly objective is more than just a different theme. XP, quests, crowns, perfect lessons etc. There’s a lot of room for Duolingo to get creative!
These simple changes would make the monthly challenges wayyyyy more interesting and worthwhile.
They’d actually be worth completing and would finally incentivise learners to spend more time on Duolingo — which, surely, is a win-win for everyone!
What do you think of Duolingo Challenges?
Challenges have so much potential. Thankfully it seems Duolingo are starting to realise it!
With a few simple tweaks, I think it could soon become one of Duolingo’s main features.
But what do you think?
As always, let me know in the comments!
Thanks for this discussion! Like you, I earned my Hamamatsu Kite festival badge and was really looking forward to making it my “speech bubble” for leader boards. I’ve been desperately trying to work out how to display it, and I hope that Duolingo introduce this ASAP.
Cheers!
That’s a great suggestion, Adam! I actually missed out on the Hamamatsu badge so I’m very jealous. Hopefully Duolingo will let you show it off soon!
ارسل صورة الشارة لمهرجان هاماتسو كايت
What’s the next challenge.
Well – I finished the Hamamatsu Kite Festival Challenge in May, but I never received the badge. Looks like a software bug
How annoying! I’d definitely chase Duolingo up about that!
One sec to see your badges see complete part
Hello Matt, right now I am learning english with duolingo. But unfortunately I am an android user and I cannot see the challenges. Hopefully this will change soon!
Greetings, Alexandros
Hi there! I completed the July challenge (Eddy’s big race) in just 9 days! I am probably a very quick learner on Duolingo!
They’re active on Android now (at least for me). Eddy’s Big Race in July was the first one available to me.
Same here, Challenge popped up, and I’m sad that it won’t be available over the browser. Actually a motivation for me, although the target-time frame is a bit big for my taste. Might motivate, though, to finally develop a habit.
Hej, thanks for the great information! Just wanted to say that is is now available on Android for me, first challenge is Oscar’s Duocon
I like the idea behind the badges but this may be a bug: I completed the gold level for July and August (2107 xp in July, 2114 xp in August) but when I look under badges, it says that I only completed the 1000 xp badges.
Oh I just noticed that too. They all say 1000 XP regardless of how much XP I actually earned.
I wonder if that means they do plan to make different types of challenges in the future and are marking these as those you had to earn 1000 XP for?
Hello i followed you and i use Android and i had uninstalled the app for a while and reinstalled it in this September month and i completed September challenge day before yesterday or yesterday and my duolingo username is @winxfloraindia
I mean winxfloraindia
Wait matt for october challenge its only 500 xp on the challengr
And matt i changed my duolingo username to winxrosameojasi and matt i wish there are different level badges for how many xps you earn and also we can showcase our badges
The Oct 2021 challenge was 1500 xp for me. I think I started Oct in the Sapphire League. Maybe that has something to do with it?
I only started with duo in Aug, so many things are a mystery to me still.
Thanks for the article.
Why didn’t you say up front that this is not available for laptop/desktop users?
Did he ever say that wasn’t available for laptop/desktop users in a not up front way? Maybe it is available? But anyway, I can’t find it on my desktop. That’s what I came here to find. I’m way faster on my laptop than on my phone because I’m more used to typing on a laptop.
The badge for Zari’s Sparkly New Year is the New Year badge, not the Big Sleep badge, Matt!
Hi Matt!
I have been using Duolingo for about 3 weeks and so far, I am unable to do a timed challenge. Sometimes a pop up will invite me to participate in a timed challenge, to which I accept, but then nothing. Any idea why that would be? Glitch? Has this happened to you? If you have any suggestions please let me know! I’d love to try one out!
So, I’m having a lot of bugs with Duolingo and I’ve submitted them to support and gotten zero help/response. I’m so desperate for gems (just to literally finish the “legendary” level sixes. I have multiple in limbo in my lesson tree. I’ve taken to logging into Duolingo every hour on the hour to watch an ad for gems. I realized one of the reasons I’m so desperate is that my daily challenges aren’t registering. I just completed two stories to fulfill the daily challenge and got no gems and it’s still recorded as not complete. Is it my iOS? Is my app out of date? I’m seriously desperate here!!
Hi I have a question maybe you can answer it. So as you know it’s the first of July and a new challenge is here, but my challenge is weird because instead of earning 1000 XP I need to complete 30 quests. My other family members just have the normal 1000 XP challenge. Do you know why I got this weird challenge? Have you got it too?
It kind of makes me sad because normally I’m the first in my family to earn a new badge but this time I simply can’t be the first because I need at least 10 days of completing all daily quests to beat this challenge (it’s motivating myself if I’m like the first earning it) 🙁
How does this July challenge work? I have been doing all 3 daily quests every day but I only have 8 points, shouldn’t I have 21 by now? I don’t like that this is not explained or not working correctly.
This July 2022, nothing showed on my app (iPhone) although the corner news said “July Monthly Challenge in heating up”. I googled and saw your post. So I updated the app and the challenge showed up as 30 quests. I used my iPad later and the challenge is 1000xp. I updated the app of the iPad but still the same. After finishing the 30 quests, the trophy was awarded but with a 30xp under it. The app on iPad still showing it’s unfinished (about 700xp now).
While I can’t find challenges on desktop, it does seem that the XP challenges can be completed on desktop and then show up on mobile. However, perfect lessons and stories challenges didn’t seem to transfer. I didn’t wait that long, though. Maybe perfect lessons and stories challenges just take longer, but the XP that I was earning on desktop showed up pretty quickly on my phone’s challenges progress bar.
About six months later, this has not changed. The earned XP appears immediately on my iPhone app, but I completed 4 perfect lessons on the website via my laptop and they didn’t count as completed quests (one was 2 perfect lessons). This data should mirror or it loses the appeal.
I just updated my Duolingo app for the first time in a while, a day before the end of the month, and it has now switched from earning 1000XP for the challenge to the 30 quests. Except any quests I did complete this month aren’t added. I was so close to 1000xp and I’m so bummed it’s now impossible to earn the badge!! Really wish they wouldn’t change the way you earn badges even if you updated until the next month. I’m so discouraged now.
So I completed the July quest but for some reason I didn’t get a badge can anyone help me.
I think this was because Duolingo was A/B testing with the new Challenges format. Hope that was helpful.
Another tweak they could make is to allow people to opt out of being in challenges completely. As in don’t even show them or force us to see our “progress” throughout the week/month.
Also this article doesn’t explain EVERYTHING; maybe everything in the app. It would sure be nice to have some explanation about the things that transfer from the web version over to the app and vice versa. The person I’m paired with primarily uses the web version of Duo, and I bounce back and forth between web and app. Only after doing several lessons, we realized the lessons done on the web don’t count toward our friend challenge. Frustrating.
I never heard about challenges until today when one of my students said he had completed them in three languages. I do not see anything icons for challenges on my screen: nothing’s floating, and there is nothing like it on the bar at the bottom. I am using a laptop.
Hi Matt,
When I first joined Duolingo in the bronze league, another user followed me, and when I followed him back, it hooked us up into a Friend Quest, which continued each week with the same guy. I always did most of the work (sometimes all of it), but got a reward for the Quest each week of like 100 gems and a 30-minute 2XP Boost. Nice. But this guy was getting that too, and I didn’t think it was fair because he did sooo little, and sometimes literally nothing. So, I unfollowed him temporarily in hopes that the Friend Quest would transfer to the next person on my follow list, who actually does a lot of work (I still do way more, but at least she does daily effort too, I respect her efforts), so I thought, I’d anyone should benefit from me ripping through the Quests fast, it should be her.
Well, I ended up losing my Friend Quest altogether this week because now it says I have no friends available to do it with. So she must already be doing it with someone. So I re-followed the other guy, but it still won’t let me do the Quest! So now I’ve lost out on the weekly 100 gems and 30-min 2XP boost.
How can I get this back? I’m in the higher leagues now, so it’s not like I’ll find someone who isn’t already doing one, I imagine.
Help, thanks.
My September challenge is to complete 40 quests.
When I’m the one to complete a Friend Quest the XP boost kick in right way (boo). However, what happen if my friend is the one who completes the quest? Do I have to be using the app at the same time to get the boost? Can I choose when the boost starts?
As a former kindergarten teacher, I worked hard to help Junior “earn” his field trip. I was super disappointed that I didn’t get to see a happy image of Junior getting to go on the trip!! Silly of me, I know. But I am spoiled by the Duo characters rejoicing each of my correct answers and have come to expect that interpersonal aspect of the game.
After several months, I finally got Daily Quests on Android! (Sept 2022) I didn’t get the new monthly objective on non-iOS devices, though.
I’d like to see a post about the new achievements. Suddenly, I received a “Nocturnal” achievement for completing the first lesson in a series after 10 pm tonight that requires three more lessons after 10 pm to get to the next level. Is there an equivalent for early birds?
This month’s challenge is actually called Duo’s New Years Party. It used to be called Celebrate the New Year with Duo.
The February challenge, “Junior’s Love Letter”, is not updating. I complete the quests but no progress is added to the challenge.
For reference, I only use the website to do the lessons. Later check the app for the challenge progress (before some reason one cannot see challenges on the website). I never use the app to do the lessons.
I am having the same issue. The completed quests are not registering in the tracker.
Cool- you added a list of badges! Also, the new challenge layout and objective dropped on Android in March 2023. It’s interesting how they had a new CL&O on the same month as the bronze, silver, and gold badges. Was it a coincidence? I don’t know.