How to Earn a Merit Badge

What this page is

Every merit badge, from Basketry to Nuclear Science, is earned by the same process. This page is that process, not the requirements for any particular badge, which live on the Merit Badges page at scouting.org and change from year to year.

The graph below is drawn from the Guide to Advancement section 7, cited on every item.

The four things people get wrong

The unit leader comes first, not last. You may work on any badge at any time once you are registered. But before working with a counselor, or attending a merit badge fair, camp session or webinar, you must meet your unit leader or their delegate. That meeting is a required part of the process, not a courtesy, and it is where you are given the name of an approved counselor. A Scout who goes around it can be asked to meet the requirements again with a counselor the unit leader accepts.

Nobody may stop you choosing a badge. Units must not impose rank or age requirements for merit badge work, and however strongly a leader advises against a particular badge, the decision is the Scout's. If you and your unit leader cannot agree on a counselor, you must be allowed to work with the registered and approved counselor of your choice.

A partial is a normal result, not a failure. If you do not finish everything, the counselor initials and dates the requirements you did pass and does not sign off the badge. Partials have no expiry except your 18th birthday, and no unit, district or council may invent one. At a camp or a merit badge fair, a partial is the expected outcome rather than the disappointing one.

The blue card takes four signatures, in two pairs. The unit leader signs before you start and again at the end; the counselor signs twice at the end, on two different parts of the card. Each signature stands for a conversation with a registered adult, which is the point of the whole design. Where a council uses Scoutbook Plus or another system instead of cards, the same conversations and the same records still have to happen.

How to read the graph

An arrow points from the thing that has to happen first to the thing it unlocks. Dotted lines are recommended order carrying no obligation. The two branches after the counseling session (a partial, or everything met) rejoin, because a partial finished later arrives at the same place.