47 YouTube Challenge Video Ideas for 2024 (ULTIMATE List)
Creating new, engaging videos for your YouTube channel will help you grow and make your YouTube videos eligible for monetization.
Sometimes, though, you’re just fresh out of new video ideas.
My question is: have you ever tried challenge videos? As someone with their own YouTube channel (of over 175k subscribers), I can tell you that challenge videos are a great way to spice up your content.
To help you get started, I created this list of the 47 best YouTube challenge videos. Let’s take a look.
What Are the 47 Best YouTube Challenge Video Ideas?
As you read this list of challenge ideas, keep your niche and channel needs in mind. If you see an idea you like that doesn’t seem to fit your target audience, think about how you could tweak it.
Blindfolded Drawing Challenge
For this challenge, put on a blindfold and have a partner give you instructions to follow while you draw. Before you start, your partner should have an image in mind for the end result.
DIY Tie-Dye Challenge
One of many fun DIY challenge ideas, use natural dyes from foods or other sources, and make your own tye-dye clothes or creations.
Cotton Ball Challenge
Grab some bowls, some spoons, and some cotton balls, and line up to see who can scoop the most cotton balls into their bowls within a certain amount of time.
Blindfolded Makeup Challenge
A fun challenge for your makeup or beauty YouTube channel, have a friend put on a blindfold and do your makeup.
Memory Challenge
The core concept of a memory challenge is to have a bunch of items or images to remember and then test the player’s memory. However, you can also turn it into more of a trivia theme.
Water Bottle Flip Challenge
One of many simple challenge ideas, team up with some friends or your partner and see who can flip their water bottle upright the fastest.
Extreme Jenga Challenge
Order some of those oversized (I’m talking REALLY BIG!) Jenga blocks and play the biggest Jenga game of your life. Bonus fun for speed rounds.
BeanBoozled Challenge
BeanBoozled gives you two options of jelly beans to try that are the same color but have drastically different flavors. You don’t know which is delicious and which is terrible.
Spicy Food Challenge
A popular challenge for couples’ YouTube videos, see which of you can take the heat and which of you can’t by eating increasingly spicy foods.
Escape Room Challenge
This challenge takes you to an escape room and has you share your experience solving puzzles to get out of an escape scenario. Challenge another channel to see who can get out the fastest.
Dance Off Challenge
Have a dance competition with friends or family to see who has the best moves. You can do this at an arcade, at home with some dance games on the switch, or freestyle.
Not My Arms Challenge
This challenge video is really popular, and in it, someone stands or sits behind you and uses their arms to complete tasks like eating, drawing, or putting on makeup.
Egg Roulette Challenge
In this challenge, participants smash eggs on their eggs. The catch? Some are raw; some are hardboiled.
Try Not to Sing Along Challenge
This is a fun video where audience members can play along. Play some popular music—the catchier, the better—and see how far you get before you sing along.
Pringles Challenge
There are a lot of interesting Pringles flavors out there. Do a blind tasting where you have to try and guess each flavor.
Eating Only Tiny Foods for 24 Hours Challenge
There are lots of unique food challenge videos out there. For this one, you can only eat tiny foods for a whole day. Think of mini pizzas, tiny salads, and more.
Smoothie Challenge
Blend together random ingredients and then drink the results. You can have friends help pick the items to make the experience more fun and the results more random.
100 Layers Challenge
For this challenge, you apply 100 layers of something and see how it turns out. Think makeup, clothes, frosting on a cake, you name it.
Whisper Challenge
For the whisper challenge, grab some noise-canceling headphones and film some friends whispering phrases while the person with the headphones has to guess what is being said.
Exploding Watermelon Challenge
This is one of the classic YouTube challenges. Grab a watermelon and a BUNCH of rubber bands, and see how many bands it takes for the watermelon to explode.
DIY Room Decor Challenge
Using only homemade things, try to decorate a room according to a certain aesthetic. Think cottage core, japandi, modern, whatever you like.
No Mirror Makeup Challenge
Film yourself putting on your makeup without a mirror. This is another popular challenge on beauty and makeup YouTube channels.
Speech Jammer Challenge
Like the whisper challenge, this one also involves headphones. Instead, try to speak while wearing a set of headphones that plays your voice back with a slight delay.
Eating Only One Color Food for 24 Hours Challenge
For a whole day, only eat foods from one color group. You can level this up by requiring that the meals be fully balanced or contain at least three ingredients. You can also branch out to processed foods or food brand colors.
What’s in My Mouth Challenge
One person in this challenge is blindfolded while the other chooses random objects to put in the blindfolded person’s mouth. They then have to guess what the items are.
Chubby Bunny Challenge
In another of the classic YouTube challenges, participants put more and more marshmallows in their mouths while trying to say the phrase “chubby bunny” and still be understood.
Innuendo Bingo Challenge
In this challenge, participants have a mouthful of water, and the others need to try to make them laugh.
Cinnamon Challenge
This is one of the classic YouTube challenges where participants have 60 seconds to try and eat a spoonful of cinnamon.
Touch My Body Challenge
For this challenge, a participant is blindfolded, and the other person guides their hand to touch different body parts. They then have to guess which part they are touching.
Gummy vs. Real Food Challenge
Participants decide who will eat real foods and who will eat the gummy versions and then film themselves. It’s pretty mild when it’s pizza or grapes, but when it’s tongue or eyes…
Guess the Sound Challenge
Participants listen to sound effects and have to guess the sounds they hear.
DIY Pancake Art Challenge
Using just what you have in your kitchen, challenge a friend to see who can make the best pancake art.
Soda Tasting Challenge
Another blind challenge, participants try different sodas and have to guess the flavors or brands.
The Floor is Lava Challenge
This is a popular kids channel challenge, but anyone can do it. Act like the floor is lava and try to get from one point to the next without touching the floor.
Ugly-Clothes-Cute Challenge
Go thrifting or raid someone’s closet and find the ugliest clothes you can find. Then, try to DIY or alter them to make them into something cute or trending.
Extreme Brain Freeze Challenge
Eat frozen foods as fast as possible and try to endure the resulting brain freeze. This is a fun challenge to do with a group of friends or a partner.
Tin Can Challenge
YouTube challenges with food are always popular. Take the labels off canned food items, eat them, and try guessing what they are.
Accent Challenge
Pick different accents—or popular celebrities with distinctive accents—and try to match the way they talk.
Extreme Sour Candy Challenge
Similar to the spicy foods challenge, grab sour foods, candies, and drinks and challenge some friends or a partner to see who can handle the most.
Ghost Pepper Challenge
Another one of the classic YouTube challenges, film yourself (and some friends, partner, or family) eating the infamous ghost pepper.
Ice Bath Challenge
For some, a lifestyle, for others, a challenge. Fill a bathtub with ice and water and see how long you can last.
TikTok Dance Challenge
Find a trending TikTok dance and challenge yourself to learn it. For extra fun, you can challenge another channel to see who can master it first. Check out this post for more TikTok video ideas.
Baby Food Challenge
Challenge yourself and some friends to eat baby food. This is most often done with the classic jarred food, but there are a lot of items to choose from, so get creative.
Tape Face Challenge
Participants tape their faces in funny ways and then try to complete everyday tasks without their hands. This adds a different level of humor to a typical no-hands challenge.
Extreme Yoga Challenge
With a partner or friends, attempt different challenging yoga poses. The more ridiculous, the better.
No Thumbs Challenge
Grab some duct tape and tape your thumbs to your hands. Then, go about your day trying to complete ordinary tasks.
Just Say No Challenge
For this challenge, you must say “no” to everything anyone asks you that day. This is fun to do without telling anyone you know—you can get some pretty surprised responses from people.
How to Make Sure the Challenge Fits YouTube Channel Niche
At first glance, it may seem like a lot of these videos don’t fit your niche. If that’s the case, I recommend thinking outside the box a little.
For instance, the cotton ball challenge doesn’t necessarily have to be cotton balls. Have a beauty channel? Try scooping beauty supplies instead.
If you have a music channel, you could choose to only do musical instruments for a guess the sound challenge or whisper famous artists or songs for a whisper challenge.
And for a no thumbs challenge? This might be kind of tricky (and fun for your viewers!) if you’re a fitness YouTuber and need to film your routines.
Challenge videos are supposed to be creative and fun, so play with the ideas a bit to see how you can make them fit for you and your audience.
Keep Safety in Mind for Your Challenge Videos
While most challenge videos are purely harmless fun, some have the potential to cause some damage—emotionally or physically.
Just because a challenge is trending doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea, so do a little research to make sure that you can perform the challenges as safely as possible.
You also might consider putting a warning or disclaimer in your video if a challenge you are doing has some potentially negative side effects.
Challenge Video Ideas for YouTube FAQ
What Are the Most Popular Challenge Ideas Right Now?
Trends come and go, but the most popular challenge YouTube videos right now seem to be (in no particular order):
- Chubby Bunny Challenge
- Try Not to Laugh Challenges (Innuendo Bingo Challenge)
- Not My Arms Challenge
- Ghost Pepper Challenge
- BeanBoozled Challenge
- Whisper Challenge
- No Mirror Makeup Challenge
What Are Some Channels Popular for Their YouTube Challenges?
Some successful YouTube channels that are popular for their challenges include:
Infuse Your Channel With Some Fun YouTube Challenges
YouTube challenge videos are a great way to add some fun and humor to your channel. They are also a great way to mix things up if you feel like you’re running low on video ideas.
Now it’s time to plan your content, film and edit your videos, and get streaming.
