Capitales Françaises de la Biodiversité
Run by Plante et Cité + Office Français de la Biodiversité. Annual themed competition (2026 theme: nature restoration) where French municipalities document their best biodiversity practices through regional workshops and a national jury.
Municipalities compete head-to-head for the national 'Capitale Française de la Biodiversité' title plus regional category prizes. Strong civic-pride and PR incentive. Winning mayor gets national press.
Submissions must demonstrate citizen engagement, NGO partnerships, and staff collaboration; entries are co-built by elected officials, technical staff, associations, and residents. Regional workshops cluster nearby communes to share practices.
Civic, French-language example. Town-vs-town not app-vs-app. Theme rotation (water, biodiversity, restoration) keeps it fresh. Demonstrates inter-area competition can drive intra-area coalition-building.
Others in the same family
BiodiverCity Challenge (Alberta)
Regional spin-off of the City Nature Challenge model run by Nature Alberta. Residents in participating Alberta cities/towns use iNaturalist or eBird to log observations during the challenge window. Specifically calibrated for the Leduc-Edmonton-St. Albert corridor.
City Nature Challenge
Started 2016 as LA-vs-SF friendly competition; now an annual end-of-April 4-day bioblitz where cities compete on most observations, most species, most participants. Using iNaturalist. Run by California Academy of Sciences + Natural History Museum LA.
Stridekick / Big Team Challenge / Step Count Challenge
Paths for All / Walking Scotland's national 4-week team walking challenge. Teams of 5 (workplaces, community groups, council departments) compete on cumulative steps. Big Team Challenge and Stridekick are commercial backends used by councils to run city-vs-city or department-vs-department editions on virtual maps (London, Route 66, Great Wall etc.).
Tidy Towns (Ireland)
Department of Rural & Community Development annual competition, organised since 1958, where ~900 towns/villages compete on environment, biodiversity, tidiness, and community participation. Studied by Interreg Europe as a 'good practice' for community-led regeneration; 30,000+ volunteers logging 1M+ hours annually.
Walksy / WalkOff (fog-of-war walking games)
Your city map starts under a mist; every step clears fog around your GPS position and reveals streets, parks, and landmarks. Add friends, join/create guilds, fight guild territory wars over city sectors.
Beat the Street
Free 6-7 week walking and cycling game played across a town. Contactless RFID Beat Boxes are mounted on lamp posts across the playing area; players (children, families, workplaces, voluntary groups) tap cards on boxes to score points. Over 1.9 million participants have played in 5,000+ schools to date.