Newsletter
Bellingcat Weekly Newsletter
Bellingcat
First access to Bellingcat's investigations, guides, events, and workshops, free, weekly by name. The letter to study finished work rather than tools.
Bellingcat's main list is a Mailchimp newsletter titled Weekly Newsletter, offering first access to published investigations, guides, interviews, and training workshops. A separate monthly Challenge newsletter on another platform announces the collective's open-source challenges and their answers. Neither has a public archive, so you judge it by the website it points to.
Worth it if
- You want to see how finished open-source investigations look, every week
- You follow conflict, human rights, or accountability reporting
- You want early notice of Bellingcat workshops, which fill
- You enjoy monthly puzzles and want the Challenge announcements
Skip it if
- You want tool roundups; this is methodology and output, not toolkits
- You need to read back issues before subscribing; there is no archive
What is inside
- 01
Published investigations
The week's investigations with the methods used, from geolocation to data analysis.
- 02
Guides and resources
New how-tos and tool guides from the resources section.
- 03
Events and workshops
Upcoming paid workshops and public events.
- 04
Challenge list
A separate monthly email with the new open-source challenge and the answers to the last one.
What you will be able to do
- Study one finished investigation a week and reverse-engineer its method
- Catch workshop dates before they sell out
- Practise on the monthly challenge and check your answer
How current it is
The signup form is live in October 2026 and the site publishes constantly. We could not read an issue, so cadence beyond the name is unverified.
- Updated
- Signup live, October 2026; issue dates not public
- Maintained
- Actively maintained
How to get the most from it
- 01
Read one linked investigation properly each week
List the sources and methods you can identify, then compare with what the article says it did.
- 02
Subscribe to the Challenge list too
It is the practice half of the same community.
Strengths
- The field's best-known investigations, first
- Free
- A companion practice challenge
Limitations
- No archive to preview
- Not a tool roundup
- Cadence not independently verified
Pair it with
- ReadNewsletterFree + paidIntermediate
The OSINT Newsletter
A methods letter to pair with an investigations one.
- ReadCommunityFreeAll levels
Bellingcat Discord
Where the same investigations are discussed as they happen.
- ReadBookPaidBeginnerArchived
We Are Bellingcat
The history behind the investigations you will read.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Where is the signup?
A Mailchimp form linked from the bellingcat.com homepage. The site's own newsletter path returns a not-found page, so use the form link.
What is the Challenge newsletter?
A monthly list on a separate platform announcing new Bellingcat open-source challenges and the answers to the previous month's.
Learned the method? Practise it on real data
The resources above teach the craft. When you want to run real lookups across breach, people, domain, and crypto sources without opening a dozen vendor accounts, that is what SearchIn is for.
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