Short answer: yes, but only as a byproduct of a content habit you should already be running, not as a goal on its own. The blue Top Voice badge is invite-only and reviewed manually by LinkedIn's editorial team. The gold badge that used to be earned through collaborative articles was retired in late 2024 and cannot be earned anymore.
Below: the real difference between the two badges, an honest myth-vs-reality table, a step-by-step breakdown of what actually improves your odds, cited stats on who holds the badge today, and a clear worth-it decision block.
TL;DR: The direct answer
Worth pursuing if you already post consistently in a clear niche and want a free, editorially vetted credibility marker that takes roughly a year or more to earn. Not worth restructuring your strategy around, since there is no application process, no guaranteed timeline, and the badge can be revoked at the twice-yearly review if activity drops. The old gold badge earned through Collaborative Articles was retired starting October 8, 2024 and cannot be re-earned; only the blue, invite-only badge remains active.
You already post 3 to 5 times a week with a clear point of view and plan to keep doing it regardless of any badge.
You are building a personal brand tied to your job (founder, consultant, recruiter, agency owner) where 'recognized voice in X' is a credibility shortcut with buyers or press.
You want a low-cost, non-paid signal to put on a proposal, speaker one-pager, or media kit alongside your actual work.
You are patient. Multiple guides estimate a year or more of consistent posting before LinkedIn's editorial team notices an account.
You are chasing the badge itself instead of the underlying habit (content quality, consistency, real engagement) that would grow your reach with or without it.
You expect it to replace an actual go-to-market motion. It is a credibility marker, not a lead-generation channel on its own.
You are hoping to farm collaborative articles for the badge. That path (the old gold badge) was retired and cannot be re-earned that way.
You would rather spend the next 12 months on a smaller, more targeted audience than a generic 'thought leader' badge; a 15,000-impression post to your actual ICP usually converts better than status alone.
Lifast keeps your LinkedIn presence posting on a real cadence with content tuned to the algorithm, the same habit LinkedIn's editorial team looks for before extending a Top Voice invite.
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Most confusion about this topic comes from conflating the retired gold badge with the still-active blue badge. Here is the myth next to the verified reality for each.
| What people assume | The verified reality |
|---|---|
| There are two badges you can still 'get' today: a gold one and a blue one. | Only one exists in 2026. The gold Community Top Voice badge, automatically awarded for contributing to collaborative articles, was retired starting October 8, 2024, and every existing gold badge expired by December 7, 2024. Only the blue Top Voice badge still exists. |
| You can earn the badge by contributing enough collaborative-article answers. | That was true of the old gold badge (top 5% of contributors, capped at 2,500 badge holders per skill, per Roloff Consulting's breakdown of the retired program). The current blue badge has no application, no point system, and no collaborative-article shortcut. |
| The badge is awarded by an algorithm based on your stats. | LinkedIn's own help documentation describes the blue badge as invitation-only and led by the company's editorial team, who manually review content quality, originality, and engagement rather than running a pure numbers formula. |
| Once you get it, it's permanent. | As of a January 2025 LinkedIn update reported by Social Media Today, Top Voices are reassessed twice a year. A badge holder keeps the badge for a minimum of six months and must keep meeting the program's requirements to renew it. |
| Top Voices are mostly full-time creators and influencers. | An independent analysis of 368 badge holders by Influence Intelligence found 58 percent run the organization they post about (121 CEOs, 62 founders, 25 presidents or chairs), and only 2 of 368 listed a job title of 'content creator.' |
Honest caveat: LinkedIn does not publish official badge-holder demographics. The figures below come from named third-party analyses, not LinkedIn itself, and are cited so you can verify them directly.
"58 percent of badged individuals run the organization they post about (121 CEOs, 62 founders, 25 presidents or chairs), and only 2 of 368 have a job title literally listing 'content creator.'"
Source: Influence Intelligence, analysis of 368 Top Voice badge holders
"There are around 7,000 LinkedIn Top Voice influencers worldwide."
"Starting October 8, 2024, we will no longer award new Community Top Voice badges going forward... your badge will expire within 60 days."
Diana YK Chan, a LinkedIn Top Voice and personal branding strategist, walks through what realistically improves your odds with LinkedIn's editorial team.
There is no application form. This is the realistic sequence creators and consultants report following before LinkedIn's editorial team takes notice.
Pick one narrow, defensible niche
Choose a single topic, tech recruiting, B2B SaaS marketing, solo consulting, rather than posting broadly. LinkedIn's editorial review appears to work per topic category, so a scattered profile is harder to place.
Publish original, experience-based content 3 to 5 times a week
Posts that share a specific framework, a counterintuitive finding, or a real result with numbers consistently outperform vague opinion content, and consistency over many months matters more than any single post.
Optimize your profile for a human reviewer
A professional photo, a clear banner, a headline naming your niche, and an About section with real credentials make it easier for LinkedIn's editorial team to place you in the right category during review.
End posts with a specific, answerable question
Engagement quality, not just volume, is part of the editorial criteria. A specific question that invites a real, personal answer produces more substantive comments than a generic 'thoughts?'
Contribute to Collaborative Articles for visibility, not for a badge
The badge tied to Collaborative Articles is retired, but consistently posting sharp, specific answers under a topic still builds a visible track record inside that category.
Stay compliant with LinkedIn's Professional Community Policies
Policy violations, off-brand pivots, or long stretches of inactivity are the most commonly cited reasons a badge is declined or not renewed at review.
Give it 12 or more months before judging the strategy
Multiple creator guides describe a year or longer of consistent posting before an account tends to get noticed. There is no shortcut, and no legitimate paid path to the badge.
Real editorial vetting: LinkedIn's own team reviews the account, so the badge functions as third-party social proof rather than a self-claimed title.
Some visibility lift is plausible. Marketing guides such as Octopus CRM's report early access to features and priority placement signals for badge holders, though LinkedIn does not publish an exact reach multiplier.
It is a genuine shortcut in conversations with journalists, podcast bookers, and conference organizers who scan Top Voice rosters for guests, even if it is not the only way to get booked.
It costs nothing to pursue. Unlike paid verification or ad spend, the badge only requires the content habits that already grow an account.
There is no published checklist, timeline, or appeal process. You cannot apply, and LinkedIn does not explain a rejection.
The badge is reassessed twice a year and can be lost through inactivity, an off-topic pivot, or a Professional Community Policy issue.
The Influence Intelligence analysis found roughly half of badge holders sit under about 20,000 followers, meaning the badge is not a reliable proxy for large reach.
About 6.8 percent of badges, per the same analysis, go to people importing an audience built on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok, which can make a topic category feel less meritocratic than it looks from the outside.
These composite scenarios illustrate common patterns described in creator guides and are not single real individuals; they use plausible, representative numbers.
A 6-person recruiting agency founder posts 4x a week about tech hiring, always ending with a specific question, and replies to every comment for 90 minutes after publishing.
After roughly 14 months, LinkedIn's editorial team invites her into the Top Voice program under 'Recruiting.' She adds the badge to her proposal deck; a prospect later tells her it was the reason they took the first call.
The badge arrived as a byproduct of an existing content habit, not as the goal of it. Nothing about her weekly workflow changed after receiving it.
A freelance marketer spends 3 months almost exclusively answering LinkedIn Collaborative Articles prompts, hoping to earn the (then-active) gold badge quickly.
The gold badge program is retired before his contribution volume qualifies. The comment history stays on his profile as a minor credibility signal, but the badge itself never materializes.
Optimizing for a specific badge mechanic is fragile. Optimizing for genuinely useful contributions holds its value even if the program around it changes.
A SaaS operations lead earns the blue badge, then goes quiet on LinkedIn for 5 months during a product launch crunch.
At the next twice-yearly review, the badge is not renewed. Nothing else about his profile or business changes; he simply no longer has the marker.
The badge tracks an ongoing behavior, not a one-time achievement. Treat it like a subscription to a habit, not a trophy.
Trying to farm collaborative articles for a badge
This path was retired in October 2024. Time spent chasing the old gold-badge mechanic specifically is time that could go into original posts.
Posting across five topics at once
LinkedIn's editorial review appears to work per topic category. Splitting attention across recruiting, AI, and productivity content dilutes the signal in any single category.
Buying followers or engagement pods to inflate metrics
The independent badge-holder analysis shows the program does not correlate cleanly with follower count, and coordinated fake engagement risks a Professional Community Policy flag that can block consideration entirely.
Going quiet after getting the badge
Since reassessment happens twice a year, treating the badge as a permanent trophy instead of an ongoing habit is the most common way accounts lose it.
Assuming the badge alone will generate leads
The badge is a credibility marker for people who already found you. It does not replace outbound, a lead magnet, or a content-to-lead pipeline that actually captures interest.
Giving up after 60 or 90 days
Most guides describe a year or longer of consistent posting before editorial review typically happens. Judging the strategy on a one-quarter timeline is judging it before it has had a chance to work.
LinkedIn ran two very different programs under similar names for a few years, which is the main source of confusion in 2026. The gold Community Top Voice badge was awarded automatically to the top contributors on Collaborative Articles, a specific skill topic, capped at 2,500 badge holders per topic according to third-party breakdowns of the program. LinkedIn retired it starting October 8, 2024, citing quality-control concerns with an automatic, non-editorial award process, and every existing gold badge expired within 60 days of that announcement.
The blue Top Voice badge is a separate, older program that was never affected by that retirement. It remains invitation-only, curated manually by LinkedIn's editorial team, and, per a January 2025 update, is now reassessed twice a year rather than granted indefinitely. Anyone researching 'how to get LinkedIn Top Voice' in 2026 needs to know the collaborative-article path no longer leads anywhere; the only route left is sustained, high-quality, on-topic posting that eventually gets noticed.
This matters for a decision like this one because a lot of still-circulating advice describes the retired gold-badge mechanics as if they were current. If a guide tells you to grind Collaborative Articles answers specifically to earn a badge, it is describing a program that stopped awarding badges in late 2024.
There is no public point system for the blue badge. LinkedIn's own help documentation states there is no defined process members can follow step by step; instead the editorial team monitors accounts over time within a topic category and extends an invitation when an account demonstrates consistent, original, high-quality content that generates real discussion.
That description lines up with what recognized badge holders and marketing agencies report anecdotally: a narrow niche, months of consistent posting, comments that go beyond generic reactions, and no policy violations. None of that is exotic advice, it is the same advice given for growing a LinkedIn presence with or without the badge in mind, which is arguably the most reassuring fact in this entire topic: you are not optimizing for something separate from good content, you are optimizing for good content and the badge is a possible side effect.
It is also worth being honest that the process is opaque enough that no outside guide, including this one, can promise a specific timeline or guarantee. Anyone selling a 'get Top Voice in 30 days' service is selling something LinkedIn's own documentation does not support.
Treat the badge as a lagging indicator, not a target. If the underlying activity (a clear niche, consistent posting, real replies, no policy issues) is happening anyway because it grows your reach and pipeline, the badge is a free bonus that shows up eventually for a subset of accounts. If that activity is not happening, chasing the badge specifically will not shortcut the outcome, since the editorial process is explicitly reviewing the activity itself.
Tools like Lifast that keep a consistent posting cadence, tuned to what the algorithm currently rewards, running without you having to manually draft every post, address the actual bottleneck (consistency and quality over many months) rather than the badge mechanic. That is a more reliable lever than any Top Voice specific tactic.
The honest verdict: worth pursuing as a side effect of a strategy you would run anyway, not worth restructuring your content calendar around. If the badge never arrives, the underlying habit still pays off in reach, leads, and reputation on its own.
Real answers to what people actually ask once they realize the gold badge is retired and only the blue badge remains.
Yes, but only one version of it. The blue Top Voice badge, awarded by invitation from LinkedIn's editorial team, is still active in 2026 and is reassessed twice a year. The gold Community Top Voice badge, which was automatically awarded for contributing to Collaborative Articles, was retired starting October 8, 2024, with all existing gold badges expiring by December 7, 2024. It cannot be earned anymore.
There is no application form. LinkedIn's editorial team reviews accounts within a topic category over time and extends invitations based on content quality, originality, consistency, and the quality of engagement a profile generates, along with compliance with LinkedIn's Professional Community Policies. Most guides describe a year or more of consistent, on-topic posting before an account tends to get noticed.
It plausibly helps at the margins (some reports of earlier access to features and better placement in Discover-style feeds) and it is a real credibility shortcut with journalists and event organizers who scan Top Voice rosters. But an independent analysis of 368 badge holders found roughly half sit under about 20,000 followers, so the badge is not a reliable stand-in for large reach. The content habits that earn the badge drive most of the actual business result, with or without the badge itself.
Yes. Since a January 2025 program update, Top Voices are reassessed twice a year and keep the badge for a minimum of six months at a time, contingent on continuing to meet the program's requirements. Extended inactivity, an off-topic pivot, or a policy violation are the most commonly cited reasons a badge is not renewed.
It can be, if you are already the face of the company on LinkedIn and post consistently about your specific niche. An independent badge-holder analysis found 58 percent of Top Voices run the organization they post about, so the program is not exclusively for full-time creators. It is worth pursuing as a side effect of content you would produce anyway, not as a strategy on its own.
Focus on the metrics that matter regardless of any badge: consistent posting, a defined niche, real replies to comments, and content built around your actual buyers rather than broad virality. A smaller, targeted audience that converts to leads is more valuable to most B2B accounts than a badge with no guaranteed timeline. The badge can still arrive later as a bonus on top of that work.