How you’re shaping our new interest badges
Sneak peek at 4 new interest badges coming in 2025
Is there any better feeling than the buzz of getting a new badge? Together with volunteers like you, our badges help show girls a world of possibilities.
A moment for our badges
Badges. They’re what girls earn after a day full of adventure and learning new things. Whether it’s at home, in units or anywhere they choose. They’re a reward for girls who are stepping outside of their comfort zone. For trying a new hobby or sport. For helping out their communities. They’re a collection of all the things girls have taken a chance on – from mindfulness to crafting to digital design. They’re the skills they didn’t know they were brilliant at – like first aid, networking or innovation.
Badges are the special guiding moments wrapped up in a keepsake. A memory that they get to cherish forever. Be it sewed onto a blanket, stitched onto a sash, framed on display or protected in a memory box. All of them represent the beating heart of Girlguiding: fun, adventure and friendship.
72 new interest badges coming in 2025
Did you know interest badges are the part girls enjoy most about our programme? We promised to review our programme after 5 years. When we did, we listened to the voices of volunteers, girls, parents and carers. And one thing was clear: everyone loved interest badges!
A quick recap of our interest badges:
- We currently have 72 interest badges in total. 12 for Rainbows, 18 for Brownies, 24 for Guides and 18 for Rangers.
- We are doubling interest badges across each section and launching them in summer 2025. That means 72 new ones in total!
- Interest badges were originally created to only be completed outside of your unit meetings. But now, we encourage girls to complete them wherever they want! Including at unit meetings or on guiding adventures.
- They were also originally created so girls could do something individually. But girls told us they enjoy badges more when they get to do them with friends and family too. So they can now complete them with other people.
- You can browse the current range of interest badges on our website.
How we’re listening to volunteers and girls
Scroll through the timeline to find out how we’re listening to you and others in guiding about our interest badges.
Your feedback of our programme
We always want to know what your experience is like running the programme, what girls enjoy the most, what they want more of and how we can make the programme the best it can be for everyone. Our programme review helped us do that. As part of the review, we asked thousands of members to have their say, and heard from:
- 8,900 volunteers.
- 3,922 girls.
- 2,000 parents and carers.
We did this by chatting to you in focus groups, interviews, group activities and surveys, asking you things like:
- What’s your unit’s favourite activity and what would your unit like to do more of?
- How are girls involved in the planning of your unit’s programme?
- What makes an activity exciting and engaging or boring and dull?
- Is your child having the experience you’d hoped for at Girlguiding?
This feedback is helping us understand what girls love so we can include more of it in future parts of the programme like new interest badges. Read your thoughts about our programme in this update for members.
Amplify, our youth steering group
We’re working with Amplify, our youth steering group, to be a voice to represent what girls want. So far, they’ve done things like:
- Attended meetings at the highest levels of Girlguiding to talk about what girls want from interest badges.
- Fed back on an overview of initial badge ideas, including ranking them, annotating challenges and sharing their thoughts with our programme team.
- Suggested the idea to have 4 new girl voice badges to empower girls to take the lead – and started designing them!
There’s more planned for the future too – we'll be asking them how they think we should launch our 72 new interest badges next year. Watch this video to see how Amplify are involved.
Create your own interest badge topper - 3 July to 30 November 2024
Since July, girls have been completing our interest badge topper which is a stand-alone activity that girls can do at home or in their units. We’ve even invited volunteers to fill out the sheet too!
All of your ideas so far have inspired the process of our new interest badge development along with what you told us about the programme. Whether it’s the full idea, design elements or your suggested challenges – everything will help us shape future programme resources.
You can submit your topper activity to us until 30 November. Read more and download the topper.
‘I’m so excited about the new interest badges and it’s been inspiring to see the flood of ideas coming from the girls, and leaders too! It’s so important that it’s the girls that have put their ideas forward, because it really reflects their changing interests, but also it shows us what skills they value and perhaps need a little bit of help to obtain. It’s such an exciting time in Girlguiding and I really can’t wait to see the new range and I have no doubt social media feeds will be buzzing with stories of girls earning their new badges!’
- Sally Kettle, deputy chief guide.
Sneak peek at 4 new interest badges
It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for... here’s a sneak peek of 1 new interest badge from each section.
Your questions answered
What will happen to badge books?
We're creating a small, printed badge book addition for Rainbows, Brownies and Guides. Rangers told us they wanted a printed book too so their new interest badges will also appear in a mini badge book for them.
By adding mini badge books to the range, it means you won’t need to spend extra money on replacing a badge book you already own. You can simply add to the one you’ve already got. We’re planning to merge both badge books in our new brand in 2026. Handbooks will also be updated then.
Will you be redesigning the current badges?
Yes! When our new interest badges are released in summer 2025, you can expect to see our current ones redesigned so the total collection will look and feel united. We’ll also be making small changes on some badges you’ve told us don’t quite work.
How is the topper being used if most of the badges are already decided?
Over 3,000 girls and more than 8,000 volunteers told us what activities and badges they want to see as part of our programme review. We got lots of feedback which has made up the bulk of new interest badge ideas. We made the topper an ongoing activity because we want your inspiration to carry us the whole way through the project. We’ve started designing some of the badges but not all of them are finalised. Creating 72 new interest badges is a big commitment and we can’t do it without your help. We’re staying flexible on purpose so everyone’s voice gets heard at the most important part of the project – that's why you can still submit your topper activity until 30 November.
Even once every badge name has been decided, we still need to write the challenges! There’s space in the topper for you to write your own challenges and your ideas help us figure out what could work best. Anything that isn’t used this time around will be used to create future programme activities.
And your toppers have told us when we’re on to a good idea – it’s great to see common ideas for the same badge with similar challenges from girls. Great minds think alike!
When can we expect to buy them?
You can buy new interest badges and mini badge books from July 2025, around the same time as programme’s 7th birthday! You’ll have them before the new term starts in August and September next year.
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