Blogging from A-Z Challenge 2026 - Unofficial Badges

I'm sharing the badges I made for the Blogging from A- Z Challenge (which takes place in April) for anyone participating in the challenge as alternatives to the official badges. But I mostly made them for myself because I didn't like the official ones. Below are the official 2026 badges. They are using the same design as the previous year but with different background, colors and images.

A-Z 2026 official badge and the second version on the right.

    At the official A-Z blog, they use the first version as the header so you can see quite clearly all the elements. I wouldn't say these are ugly but what the heck is this? Readability is not an issue except in smaller sizes but the second version is more readable. Still, why the texture, why the butterfly, why the flowers, why the square shape or why anything at all? Most people are probably not bothered by this design but I guess it's a job habit as a graphic designer to question every design decision. The old badges are better because they are more like logos being circular and everything is clear and easy to read. (See all offical badges and graphics for this year at the official A-Z blog here. ) The old badges were created by a different person so it's why these versions looked vastly different. But it probably didn't matter what my opinions are because everyone thinks differently so let's leave it.

a version of the old badges

     For this year, I used the theme of adventure/exploration for the badges.  The yellow one has mountains or what I call the land version and the blue one has the water so it's the sea version. And that middle thing is a compass/ship's wheel. I hope that explains things. Anyone participating in the challenge are free to use any or all of them. Click on the image for the larger view and download them.

version 1 - land version

version 2 - sea version

    And here are the winner's badges for completing the challenge. I've never used the winner badges so I didn't realize they had been changed. Kristin (at Finding Eliza) pointed it out that the old winner badges used to say survivor but then it was changed to winner - that didn't make sense to me. The A-Z Challenge is not a contest so I don't understand why they changed it to winner. I prefer survivor so I switched it back.

survivor badge - version 1

survivor badge - version 2

    To use survivor makes more sense because the A-Z Challenge is demanding and exhausting so in the end, if you complete it, it meant you've survived something. I plan on participating in the challenge and I'll talk about it in a later post. More about the Blogging from A-Z Challenge here.

Do you plan on participating in the Blogging From A-Z Challenge this April?