Bildts (Indo-European > West Germanic) is spoken in Het Bildt, a region in the Dutch province of Friesland. With approximately 10,000 first and second language speakers, it represents a vibrant example of European linguistic diversity. The language variety has been systematically through grammatical descriptions, dictionaries with pronunciation information, literary works, media productions (weekly radio broadcasts, theater performances), and regular newspaper columns.

For the Blizzard Challenge 2025, we have curated a dataset of high-quality audio recordings with corresponding linguistic resources. This choice of Bildts aligns with our theme of 'sustainable synthesis for language diversity' - it presents participants with the real-world challenge of developing synthesis capabilities for a well-documented but data-limited language variety, representative of the thousands of smaller languages that could benefit from speech technology. The challenge is composed of two tasks:

This is a preliminary timeline and is subject to change.

Please contact blizzard-challenge-organisers@googlegroups.com if you have any questions.