THE BIG CHALLENGE was first held in France on 18 May 1999 in some schools on the initiative of a group of English teachers. Because of the huge success and the organisational requirements involved, these teachers in France finally formed a team which is exclusively responsible for the organisation and implementation of the competition.

Today, 630,000 students take part in our competition every year throughout Europe. The Big Challenge currently exists in 9 countries: France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy. There are over 16.000 students taking part in the states of Benelux.

As we do not receive any subsidies from third parties, we finance the competition solely through the participation fee.

However, we do receive non-material support from various sides. In 2014 we were awarded the European Language Label by the EU. This award is aimed at outstanding projects in the field of teaching and learning foreign languages.

In addition we are represented on education servers and websites of various ministries.

We also work with different partners from the education sector every year, such as Cambridge English Assessment, Langenscheidt, EF Education First, TOEFL, etc.