The Bellingcat Open Source Challenge is Back

At the end of last year, Bellingcat released a set of online challenges that we hoped would test the skills of our audience and the wider open source investigator community. We wanted the challenges to be educational, to encourage people to carry out responsible online research and, most importantly, to be fun!

Around 35,000 people took part, far more than we expected. Some produced blogs about how they attacked the challenges, while GeoGuessr expert Rainbolt posted a video where he tried to solve five challenges in under 30 minutes.

We have now decided to make these challenges a regular thing – a monthly thing, to be precise. Today, we launch the first set, which you can find here (with more details below).

We’re also introducing a new monthly Bellingcat Challenge newsletter that will announce when new challenges are launched, provide detailed answers to the previous month’s questions and highlight the most creative and cool ways that people came to their conclusions. 

You can sign up to the Bellingcat Challenge newsletter here.

Each monthly challenge will consist of five open source research questions, all centred around a single theme. The first question will be published on the first Monday of every month, with a new challenge released each day that week. So, by the end of the first week of every month, you should have five open source challenges to keep you busy. The challenges will, among other things, test your geolocation, chronolocation, shiptracking, satellite imagery analysis, image verification and flight tracking skills.  We want to include as many open source research techniques as possible. 

We encourage anyone taking part to join our Discord server, where staff and members of our community will be sharing useful tips and techniques in the #BellingcatChallenge channel.

On March 12, at 5pm CET, we’ll also be hosting a live broadcast on our Patreon channel where Bellingcat founder, Eliot Higgins will go through the challenges. You can sign up for Bellingcat’s Patreon channel here.

The March Challenges

A false colour image using band ratios makes seeks to identify mining areas. Credit: Agnes Cameron/Google Earth Engine

Our December challenges featured a variety of geolocation and chronolocation posers. This month’s challenges revolve around multispectral images. These are a type of satellite imagery frequently used in open source investigations, particularly in environmental research. 

Multispectral images can reveal scenes invisible to the naked eye or that can’t be seen in optical satellite imagery, such as the presence and quality of water, types of vegetation, soil health and more.

Bellingcat recently produced this handy guide about multispectral imagery, which (hint) may be useful homework before starting this month’s challenge.

So, let us know how you get on by tagging us on Bluesky, Instagram, Mastodon YouTube or any of our social channels (find them all here). You can also head to the #BellingcatChallenge channel in our Discord server if you need to brainstorm with others looking to crack the challenges.

Good luck, and have fun!

Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel here. Subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Bluesky here and Mastodon here.