Blaugust is a blogging festival that takes place every year in August and challenges bloggers to write and publish more actively during the month. We have a great supportive community of bloggers in Discord that’s active throughout the year.
The original goal — and the requirement to achieve the Rainbow Diamond Award — is to post 31 times in 31 days. It’s not the only goal however: the most important one is to becoming more active in blogging. Whether that means a handful of posts to your blog or starting a new blog and writing your first post, every post written is a win.
There are many reasons to join Blaugust: having structure that helps you write more, meeting other bloggers and learning from them, experimenting with something new and also finding new readers.
I’ve participated three times:
- In 2023, I followed the weekly themes of the event and wrote about all sorts of things (31 posts).
- In 2024, I wrote daily posts about Python’s standard library (31 posts).
- In 2025, I was not following any specific theme and did not aim for full 31 posts and yet somehow got there. (31 posts)
- In 2026, I will be writing daily posts about Python following an A to Z model.
Goals
Blaugust currently has two sets of goals or “challenges” participants can aim for. The first set is of gradually growing challenges:
- Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You joined Blaugust for the very first time and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result, we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up.
- Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2026.
- Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2026.
- Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2026.
- Rainbow Diamond Award – You beat the original challenge and posted 31 times or more during the month of August 2026.
You don’t have to decide up front which you’d aim for necessarily. You start writing on August 1st and then see where it takes you. I usually aim for the Rainbow Diamond Award of 31 in 31 and so far have managed to reach it every year.
The second set is a bit newer and is for people who want to do a bit more community oriented stuff:
Community builders will meet at least three of the following challenges.
- Make a post on your blog on or before August 1st, 2026 inviting other bloggers to participate in Blaugust. Make sure you link the signup form.
- Make at least 5 posts directly inspired by a post by another Blaugust participant. Make sure you provide a link back to the post in question.
- Engage with other Blaugust participants at least once per week. Read posts, leave comments, join discussions in the Blaugust Discord and share posts written by others on social media.
- Guest post on another Blaugust participant’s blog – or have someone else guest post on yours!
- Create or join in a group project – choose a topic, find some other bloggers, and each post your own take on that topic on the same day.
In the past, we’ve also had separate individual achievements that Belghast introduced in 2022.
Theme weeks
To help bloggers come up with ideas, there are optional theme weeks you can follow:
- Welcome to Blaugust Week– The idea behind this week is to give a specific time to be actively talking about Blaugust and welcoming new members to the fold. This could also count as promoting Blaugust for the “Spreading the Madness” achievement. The hope is that drumming up some heavy activity of talking about the event might allow us to pick up a few more stragglers.
- Introduce Yourself Week – The idea behind this week is to have some structured time around getting to know the other bloggers. I realize that those of us who are veteran bloggers might have already written half a dozen introduction posts by now, but it is a great time to share anything interesting you might have in your arsenal.
- Creator Appreciation Week – Developer Appreciation Week or the D.A.W. was an event that took place in the blogging community independent from Blaugust but eventually died out. The more modern idea is to show appreciation for the things and creators that we love. This could be authors, musicians, developers, artists, or even other bloggers, with the focus being on sharing something that we love so that maybe others might appreciate it as well.
- Staying Motivated Week– As we get towards the end of the event, the activity can often trail off a bit. The goal of this week is to share some of your own tips surrounding how you keep motivated and stay focused on creating content. If you are new to the event, you might share some of the things that have helped you stay engaged during Blaugust.
- Lessons Learned Week – This week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not to burn them out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant and others will want to process their thoughts about the proceedings. This space is reserved as a bit of a cooldown lap so that you can share your own experiences.