All You Need To Know About GitHub Achievements 🏆

[mecodeatlas]

Your GitHub profile is more than just a list of repositories - it’s a reflection of your growth and impact as a developer. One of the most recognizable elements that brings this story to life is Achievements, a collection of badges that celebrate your milestones, contributions, and moments of creativity across the platform.

Achievements act like digital trophies - celebrating your milestones, creativity, and engagement across GitHub. Each badge tells part of your story, marking moments of learning, collaboration, and contribution within the developer community.

This guide dives deep into what Achievements are, how they work, and why they matter on your GitHub profile.

🎖️ GitHub Achievements: Celebrating Milestones

Achievements are small but meaningful badges that appear on the sidebar of your profile. Each badge highlights a specific action - maybe you merged a pull request, answered a question in Discussions, or decided to support another developer through GitHub Sponsors. Hovering over a badge reveals details on how it was earned, and sometimes links to the events that triggered it.

When Achievements were first introduced in 2022, they sparked curiosity and fun competition: suddenly, “earning the Pull Shark” or “becoming a Galaxy Brain” became community-wide goals. Since then, they’ve grown into a playful way to recognize not just code, but all kinds of contributions.

Visibility and privacy

By default, Achievements only reflect your public work. If you’d like private contributions to count, you can enable Show private contributions & achievements in your profile settings. Private activity will appear as anonymized counts. Prefer to keep your badges to yourself? You can also hide specific ones or the entire section.

🏅 Complete List of Achievements

Achievements come in different forms: some are active and can be earned today, others were tied to unique events in the past and are now retired, and a few appear in badge lists but are not available for users to unlock. The table below brings them all together for clarity, so you can see which ones are possible to earn and which ones are simply part of GitHub’s history.

Badge	How to earn	Tiers
⭐ Starstruck	Have a repository that receives stars.	Base: 16 ⭐ · Bronze: 128 ⭐ · Silver: 512 ⭐ · Gold: 4096 ⭐
⚡ Quickdraw	Close an issue or PR within 5 minutes of opening it.	One-time (no tiers)
🤝 Pair Extraordinaire	Make co-authored commits on PRs that get merged.	Base: 1 · Bronze: 10 · Silver: 24 · Gold: 48
🦈 Pull Shark	Open pull requests that get merged.	Base: 2 · Bronze: 16 · Silver: 128 · Gold: 1024
🧠 Galaxy Brain	Have your replies accepted as answers in Discussions.	Base: 2 · Bronze: 8 · Silver: 16 · Gold: 32
😅 YOLO	Merge a PR without code review.	One-time (no tiers)
❤️ Public Sponsor	Sponsor a contributor/project via GitHub Sponsors.	One-time (no tiers)
🧊 Arctic Code Vault Contributor	Code included in the 2020 GitHub Archive Program snapshot.	Retired (not earnable)
❓ Mystery Badges	Heart On Your Sleeve and Open Sourcerer - listed but not released, criteria unknown.	Not currently available

⚠️ Why an Achievement Might Not Appear

Sometimes you meet the criteria for a badge, but it doesn’t show up right away. Here are the most common reasons, along with ways to troubleshoot them:

• Processing time
  Achievements can take up to 24 hours to appear.
  👉 Workaround: wait a full day before investigating further, and try checking your profile in a private/incognito window to rule out cache issues.

• Private contributions
  Activity in private repositories won’t trigger badges unless you enable Show private contributions & achievements in your profile settings.
  👉 Workaround: enable this option and confirm that the “Include private contributions on my profile” checkbox is ticked. Keep in mind that details stay anonymized.

• Forked repositories
  Work done only in forks doesn’t count. For example, pull requests or issues created in a fork won’t trigger Achievements.
  👉 *Workaround: *To make them count, you must open a pull request to have your changes merged into the parent repository. For more information, see Creating a pull request.

• Email verification
  Commits tied to unverified emails aren’t recognized.
  👉 Workaround: check the email configured in your local Git with git config user.email. If it’s not listed or verified in your account emails, add and verify it.

• Branch requirements
  Commits on non-default branches don’t count unless merged into the default branch (main, master, or gh-pages).
  👉 Workaround: make sure your work is merged into the default branch. You can also update repo settings if the default branch has changed.

• One-time Achievements
  Some badges, such as Quickdraw or YOLO, are awarded only once.
  👉 Workaround: if you’ve already earned them, they won’t reappear. If you didn’t see them at the time, revisit the other conditions above (forks, email, privacy) to confirm why they may not have been triggered.

If you’ve tried all the above and the badge still doesn’t appear after 24 hours, the next step is to contact GitHub Support.

✨ Beyond Achievements: Profile Highlights

Not everything on your profile sidebar is an Achievement. Some badges represent status or participation in programs, such as:

• GitHub Pro, for those with an active Pro subscription.
• Developer Program Member, for users who joined GitHub’s developer ecosystem.
• Security Bug Bounty Hunter, credited for reporting vulnerabilities.
• GitHub Campus Expert, a recognition for student leaders.
• Security Advisory Credit, for contributors to the GitHub Advisory Database.

🌟 The Bigger Picture

From your very first pull request to your latest accepted answer, each Achievement reflects a moment that shaped your journey on GitHub.

In this guide, we explored how Achievements work, how to manage their visibility, what can affect when they appear, and which ones you can currently earn.

Whether you’re aiming for your first Pull Shark, proud of your Galaxy Brain, or simply curious about the mysteries still unreleased, every badge is part of the story you’re writing as a developer.

💭 Anything Missing?

We’d love to make this guide as complete and useful as possible.

If there’s an Achievement you think deserves a deeper explanation, or a question we didn’t cover, drop it in the comments below 👇 - your feedback helps us keep this resource accurate, up to date, and community-driven.

📚 Extra Resource: FAQ on Achievements

Q: Why didn’t I get an Achievement even though I met the criteria?
A: Achievements can take up to 24 hours to appear. If the badge doesn’t show:

• Check if the action happened only in a fork.
• Verify that your email is linked.
• Confirm it isn’t a one-time Achievement (Quickdraw, YOLO, Public Sponsor).
  If none of these apply, it may be worth contacting GitHub Support.

Q: Can I hide Achievements from my profile?
A: Yes. In your profile settings, you can hide the entire Achievements section or individual badges.

Q: How do private Achievements work?
A: Private activity doesn’t display by default. If you enable Show private contributions & achievements, they will appear as anonymized counts (without repository names).

Q: Are all Achievements still available?
A: No. Some are retired, like Arctic Code Vault Contributor and Mars 2020 Helicopter Contributor. If you see them, it means the person contributed at that time.

Q: What about unreleased badges like “Heart On Your Sleeve”?
A: Some badges appear in lists but aren’t available to earn. They have no published criteria and shouldn’t be expected to unlock.

Q: Can Achievements disappear from my profile?
A: Most are permanent once earned. Some highlights tied to account status (like GitHub Pro) will disappear if your subscription or membership ends.

[krishkaiser11]

Awesome guide, thanks for writing this up! I finally understand why some of my contributions weren't counting for certain badges lol.

The part about work in forks needing to be merged into the parent repo explains a lot. I've been trying to get that next tier of the Pull Shark badge for a while now. This is super helpful, thanks again!

[radar-blip]

Mars 2020 Contributor badge is missing from the list.
Just letting you know.

[anirudhmsu]

Interesting Guide, never knew about Heart On Your Sleeve and Open Sourcerer. Thanks for the info.