LinkedIn Top Voice badge: how it works and how to get it (2026)

How does the LinkedIn Top Voice badge work in 2026?

The short answer: the blue Top Voice badge is invitation-only, chosen by LinkedIn's editorial team, and reviewed twice a year. You cannot apply for it, nominate yourself through any official form, or pay for it. The gold "Community Top Voice" badge that flooded profiles in 2023 and 2024 no longer exists.

LinkedIn's own help page on Top Voices benefits describes the program as the successor to the old LinkedIn Influencer program: an invitation-only group of experts across professional topics, vetted by the editorial team "on an ongoing basis" and evaluated regularly. Members who are in it get a profile badge, a complimentary Premium Business subscription and editorial communications with content tips and early product access.

What happened to the gold Community Top Voice badge?

The gold badge was a different program. It was handed out automatically to people who contributed to LinkedIn's collaborative articles, the AI-generated articles where members added short expert answers. LinkedIn's help page on Community Top Voices says the ability to earn it ended on October 8, 2024, no new gold badges are awarded, and existing badges expired within 60 days, so the last ones disappeared in December 2024.

The reason was obvious to anyone who scrolled the feed at the time. Because the badge was earned by volume of short contributions, it became easy to farm, and the comments under collaborative articles filled up with generic text. The badge stopped signalling anything.

What criteria does LinkedIn use to pick Top Voices?

LinkedIn has not published a scoring rubric, and anyone who claims to know one is guessing. What it has said publicly is fairly consistent across its help pages and its statements to the press:

• Consistent content and regular engagement with the community. Social Media Today reported in January 2025 that this is one of the core requirements LinkedIn lists, alongside high-quality contributions and following the Professional Community Policies (Social Media Today).
• High trust standards. The benefits page says Top Voices are vetted to meet high trust standards.
• Engaged, prolific and thoughtful members whose expertise matches what other members are interested in. That last clause matters: the editorial team is looking for people who serve an audience, not only people who post a lot.

In January 2025 LinkedIn also changed how long the badge lasts. Once invited, a member remains a Top Voice for at least six months, is reassessed twice a year, and can be renewed if they keep meeting the requirements. LinkedIn can also add or remove people outside those windows. Before that change, badges were reviewed only occasionally and some holders kept them for years.

What we could not verify: several third-party guides describe nomination forms, quarterly review cycles and specific follower thresholds. None of that appears on LinkedIn's help pages as of October 2026, so treat it as rumor.

Is the Top Voice badge paid, and can you buy one?

No on both counts. LinkedIn does not charge for the badge, and its help pages describe no cash payment to badge holders; the tangible benefit is a free Premium Business subscription. If someone offers to "get you a Top Voice badge" for a fee, they are either selling something they cannot deliver or describing a tactic that risks a policy violation. LinkedIn says it removes the status from anyone who does not consistently follow its community policies.

Does a Top Voice badge matter for founders?

Less than most people think. For a creator whose business is the audience itself, the badge is a credential and a distribution boost from LinkedIn's editorial team. For a founder, CEO or partner whose business is selling something else, the badge does very little that a strong profile and a body of specific posts do not already do.

Consider what a buyer actually checks before taking a call with a founder. They look at the headline, scroll three or four recent posts, and decide whether this person understands their problem. The Edelman and LinkedIn B2B research points the same way: decision-makers use thought leadership to judge whether a vendor is worth talking to. A badge does not answer that question. A post that walks through how you cut onboarding time for a customer in their industry does.

There is also a cost. Chasing a badge pushes people toward the behavior that earned the gold badge its bad name: posting more, on more topics, for a broader audience. The 2026 feed rewards the opposite. As we explain in our LinkedIn algorithm 2026 breakdown, topic consistency and profile-to-content match now carry real weight in distribution.

What should a founder do instead of chasing a badge?

Do the things the editorial team says it values, but aim them at your buyers rather than at LinkedIn:

1. Pick two or three topics and stay inside them. A cybersecurity founder writing about breach response, CISO budgets and compliance timelines builds a clearer reputation than one who also posts about productivity and cricket.
2. Make your profile match your posts. Headline, About, Featured and banner should tell the same story your content tells. Our profile optimization checklist covers each field, and the free LinkedIn profile grader will flag the obvious gaps in a minute.
3. Engage where your buyers are. Thoughtful comments on posts from people in your ideal customer profile do more for pipeline than any badge. This is also the "regularly engaging with the community" part of LinkedIn's criteria.
4. Publish things only you could write. Numbers from your own business, mistakes you made, customer patterns you see. Generic advice is what LinkedIn is now actively demoting.
5. Measure conversations, not credentials. Profile views from target accounts, inbound DMs and booked meetings are the scoreboard.

If the badge arrives as a side effect, accept it and keep it visible. If it never arrives, you have lost nothing.

How do you show or hide a Top Voice badge if you get one?

LinkedIn's help page on showing or hiding the badge gives the steps: open your profile, click the edit icon on your intro, choose the badge in the Top Voice Badge dropdown and tick "Show badge in my intro". Unticking it hides the badge, and hiding it also removes it from your Skills section.

How Postlit approaches badges and credibility

We do not promise badges, and we would be wary of anyone who does. Our work with founders and executives starts with positioning and the profile, then three to five posts a week written from a monthly voice interview, then daily engagement on the posts your buyers read. See how that works in our LinkedIn ghostwriting service. If you want a second opinion on your profile first, send us a short form via WhatsApp or email from the contact page and a founder will reply with a written free teardown of the three changes we would make first.