What Are Open Badges? Complete Explanation of the Standard

If you've received a badge from a course, conference, or certification program and wondered what actually makes it "official", this is the article to read. Open Badges are not just digital images. They are a specific, technical standard that makes digital badges verifiable, portable, and meaningful in a way that a PDF or screenshot simply cannot match.

This article explains the Open Badges standard from first principles, no jargon assumed, no technical background required. By the end, you'll understand exactly what an Open Badge is, how it works, and why it matters to anyone issuing or earning credentials.

For the broader context, see our pillar page: Digital Credentials: The Complete Guide.

What Is an Open Badge?

An Open Badge is a digital image file, usually a PNG or SVG, that has structured metadata embedded inside it. This metadata describes:

• What was earned (the badge name, description, and criteria)
• Who earned it (the recipient's identifier)
• Who issued it (the issuing organization, with a public profile URL)
• When it was issued (and optionally, when it expires)
• Evidence of what was done to earn it

The metadata is written in JSON-LD format and conforms to the Open Badges specification maintained by 1EdTech (formerly IMS Global Learning Consortium). Because the data format is standardized and open, any compliant badge verifier can read and check the badge, not just the platform it was issued on.

This portability is what makes an Open Badge fundamentally different from a generic "digital certificate." A JPEG of a certificate proves nothing on its own. An Open Badge carries its proof with it, encoded in a form that machines can read and verify automatically.

How Open Badges Were created

Mozilla launched the Open Badges project in 2011, funded in part by the MacArthur Foundation. The original motivation was a genuine problem: informal and non-traditional learning, online courses, community programs, bootcamps, hackathons, wasn't recognized in the same way as formal degrees and certificates. There was no portable, verifiable way to show what you'd learned outside a classroom.

Mozilla's solution was elegant: create an open standard that embeds verifiable metadata into digital images, so that anyone can issue and anyone can verify badges, using a common format. The "open" in Open Badges refers to this openness, it's not proprietary to any single company or platform.

In 2016, Mozilla transferred stewardship of the Open Badges specification to the IMS Global Learning Consortium (now 1EdTech). IMS Global released Open Badges 2.0 in 2018, which became the widely deployed version you'll find on most badge platforms today. Open Badges 3.0 was released in 2022, aligning the standard with the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model.

Anatomy of an Open Badge

Every Open Badge consists of three core objects. Understanding these helps you understand both how badges are structured and how verification works.

Here's a simplified example of what the JSON-LD inside a badge assertion looks like:

{
  "@context": "https://w3id.org/openbadges/v2",
  "type": "Assertion",
  "id": "https://issuebadge.com/assertions/abc123",
  "recipient": {
    "type": "email",
    "hashed": true,
    "salt": "random-salt",
    "identity": "sha256$hash-of-email"
  },
  "badge": "https://issuebadge.com/badges/web-dev-pro",
  "issuedOn": "2026-03-16",
  "verification": {
    "type": "HostedBadge"
  },
  "evidence": "https://issuebadge.com/evidence/abc123"
}

The recipient's identity is hashed for privacy, you can verify that a badge belongs to a specific person by providing the email address (which gets hashed and compared), but the email itself isn't publicly visible in the badge metadata.

How verification works

Verification is the feature that separates an Open Badge from a PDF or a screenshot. Here's how it works step by step.

1. Someone receives a badge, either as a PNG/SVG file download or as a hosted badge URL.
2. The verifier tool reads the badge, it extracts the embedded JSON-LD from the image or reads the assertion from the hosted URL.
3. The assertion is checked, the verifier fetches the BadgeClass and Issuer Profile referenced in the assertion, confirming they exist and match.
4. The recipient's identity is confirmed, if the verifier has the recipient's email, it can hash it and compare against the stored identity hash.
5. Expiration and revocation are checked, if the assertion has an expiry date, or if the issuer has published a revocation list, this is checked too.
6. Result: Valid or Invalid, the verifier returns a clear result, usually with details of what was found.

In Open Badges 3.0, steps 3–5 are enhanced with cryptographic signatures, the issuer signs the credential with a private key, and anyone can verify the signature using the issuer's public key, making verification completely independent of the issuer's server.

Why "Open"?

The word "open" in Open Badges means several things simultaneously, and all of them matter:

• Open standard: The specification is published openly and freely. Anyone, developers, platforms, institutions, can implement it without paying a license fee or getting permission.
• Open to any issuer: Any organization or institution can issue Open Badges, from a multinational corporation to a local community program.
• Open to any recipient: Recipients own their badges and can take them anywhere. The badge isn't locked to a specific platform or tied to a proprietary viewer.
• Open to any verifier: Any tool that understands the standard can verify an Open Badge. You don't need to go back to the original issuing platform.

This openness is what gives Open Badges their durability and credibility. A badge issued on a platform that later shuts down can still be verified if it was issued correctly, the hosted URLs or cryptographic signatures provide independence from any single point of failure.

Who Issues and Earns Open Badges?

Open Badges are used across a remarkable range of contexts. Here's a snapshot of where the standard is deployed today:

The common thread is the need to recognize and communicate specific achievements in a way that is credible, verifiable, and sharable, which is exactly what Open Badges deliver.

Open Badges 2.0 vs 3.0 at a glance

Most badge platforms currently support Open Badges 2.0, though 3.0 adoption is growing. Here's the core difference at a high level:

For a complete breakdown of this migration, see: Open Badges 2.0 vs 3.0: Key Differences and Migration Guide.

How to issue Open Badges

To issue Open Badges, you need a platform that implements the Open Badges specification. You don't build it yourself unless you're running a large enterprise system. Here's the general process:

1. Choose a platform: IssueBadge.com is one credible option, it supports Open Badges-compliant issuance, bulk upload via CSV, custom badge design, and LinkedIn sharing. Other options include Credly, Badgr, and Canvas Credentials.
2. Create your BadgeClass: Define the badge, name, description, image, criteria, and issuer profile.
3. Upload recipients: Upload a list of earners (email addresses and names) via CSV or connect your LMS or event management system.
4. Issue badges: The platform generates an assertion for each recipient and either sends them a notification email or makes the badge available for claim.
5. Track engagement: Monitor which recipients claimed their badges, shared them on LinkedIn, or displayed them on portfolios.