Group Challenges

Group Challenges are a way to find motivation and connection with your friends on Strava. Group Challenges allow you to set a goal and a timeframe to see who can reach the challenge goal and beyond. Within the Group Challenge experience, you can keep track of progress, see how other athletes are doing, and view a stream of photos from the challenge. Group Challenges are private and can only be viewed by athletes who are participating in the challenge at that time. Currently, Group Challenges are only available on our mobile app.

Creating a Group Challenge

Subscribers can create Group Challenges, including athletes, with a free trial subscription.  

In order to create a challenge, select Groups from the bottom navigation menu on the Strava mobile app and tap on Active > Create a Group Challenge. Group Challenges support the following challenge goal types:

• Most Activity: See who can log the most time, distance, elevation gain, or loss. You can set an optional goal, which establishes a milestone for the group to reach. The leaderboard ranks athletes by their overall activity.
• Fastest Effort: Average pace across a specific distance via running, virtual running, or wheelchair. Setting a race distance gives athletes in your challenge a guide on how far they should go. This is the distance all efforts will be measured over, and the leaderboard will rank runners by their average pace.
• Longest Single Activity: Single activity recording of your longest distance across any sport that supports distance. The leaderboard ranks athletes by who has recorded the activity with the most distance.
• Group Goal: Chase a goal as a group. Choose between a time, distance, elevation gain, or elevation loss goal; all activities will count towards the single goal. There is no leaderboard, but you can see how you’re contributing to the group effort.

Inviting Athletes and Participant Management

Creators of Group Challenges may invite up to 199 athletes who follow them on Strava. In order for an athlete to join the challenge, they must be a subscriber or have a free subscription trial. Creators can also allow other athletes in the challenge to invite athletes who follow them. From the challenge details screen, tap the three ellipses [...] in the top right to open the challenge settings, and then enable the toggle that reads “Allow Participants to Invite Others”.

As a creator of a Group Challenge, you can add and remove athletes from your challenge. To manage the challenge participants, tap on the participant list from the challenge details screen or tap the three ellipses to go to the Challenge settings and select See Participants.

• Select the plus sign icon on the challenge details screen to add an athlete. Athletes who have been invited to participate but have not yet accepted the invitation will be listed under Pending. If you do not see a plus sign icon, it means that you are either not the challenge creator or the creator has turned off the ability for participants to invite others.
• To remove an athlete, then tap the X beside an athlete on the Accepted list.

Participating in a Group Challenge

If you are invited to a Group Challenge, you will receive a notification to join and will be able to see the challenge by navigating to Groups > Active. From there, you will also be able to see which challenges you’re currently participating in. Select Challenges from the Groups tab to view your previous Group Challenges under “Past Group Challenges.”

In order to compete, you will need to ensure that you understand a few aspects of Group Challenges. Navigate to Groups > Active and tap on an individual challenge to review the following:

• When does the challenge start?
  • The date range for the challenge is displayed at the top of the Challenge details screen, below the title and description.
• What is the goal or race distance needed for the challenge?
  
  • Tap the ellipses button in the upper right-hand corner and then click Challenge Guidelines. Here you will see how to compete in this challenge based on the goal type.
• What sports are applicable for the challenge?
  • Tap the ellipses button in the upper right-hand corner and then click Challenge Guidelines. Here, you will see the applicable sports.
  • Activity privacy controls must be set to “Everyone” or “Followers”.

To leave a Group Challenge, go to the Challenge settings screen and tap Leave Challenge. 

FAQs

Why are Followers Only activities included if I don’t follow everyone in the challenge?

Group Challenges create an inclusive environment for athletes who know each other to compete and find motivation. Because of this, we decided to include Follower Only activities so that privacy-minded athletes could compete.

Can I control what activities show up in a Group Challenge?

Applicable activities (sport type, privacy setting) will automatically show up in a Group Challenge. If you do not want an activity to be counted towards the Group Challenge, you will need to mark it as "Only You." Learn more about activity privacy controls here.

I am a free athlete, what happens to my tokens and current group challenges after August 5th?

On August 5th, free athletes will lose their group challenge tokens and will not be able to create or join a new challenge. If you are a part of a group challenge or created one before your tokens were removed, you can continue with those challenges.