Current Events
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Current Events trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The news moves fast, and most of it slips past half-noticed: an election here, a sporting upset there, a film everyone suddenly seems to have seen. This quiz gathers the stories from 2025 and 2026 that people kept talking about and turns them into questions. It covers world affairs and politics, science and space, technology and business, sport, and film, music and television. Every question names its date, so the answers stay right however long ago the headline ran, and each one comes with a short explanation of what happened and why it mattered. It works as a news round for a pub quiz or a classroom, a family trivia night with teenagers, or a quick check on how closely you have been following the headlines.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Chicago-born Robert Prevost became the first pope from the United States in May 2025 under which papal name?
Leo XIV
Leo XIV is also a citizen of Peru, where he served as Bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023. He is the first pope from the Order of Saint Augustine too.
Q 02Which country won the 2026 FIFA World Cup by beating defending champions Argentina 1–0 in extra time?
Spain
Spain became the first country to hold the men's and women's World Cup titles at the same time. Ferran Torres scored the only goal of the final in New Jersey.
Q 03Which NASA program, named after the twin sister of Apollo, flew four astronauts around the Moon in April 2026?
Artemis
Artemis II broke the distance record set by Apollo 13, carrying its crew 252,756 miles from Earth. It was the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.
Q 04Which country barred under-16s from holding accounts on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube from 10 December 2025?
Australia
Australia puts the burden on the platforms, which face fines of up to A$49.5 million. Children and parents who break the rule face no penalty at all.
Q 05Which US coin did the Mint stop making for circulation in November 2025, after more than two centuries of production?
The penny
The penny had cost the Mint more than its one-cent face value to make since 2006. It is still struck in small numbers for collectors.
Q 06Thieves who broke into the Louvre through a window in October 2025 escaped with which kind of treasure?
Crown jewels
Crown jewels worth about €88 million were taken in under eight minutes. The thieves dressed as construction workers and reached the gallery window on a furniture lift.
Q 07Which pop star joined broadcaster Gayle King on Blue Origin's all-female spaceflight in April 2025?
Katy Perry
Katy Perry's trip lasted about ten minutes. It was the first all-female spaceflight since Valentina Tereshkova flew solo in 1963.
Q 08Three gene-edited animals named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi were unveiled in 2025 as a revival of which extinct species?
Dire wolf
Dire wolf traits were written into gray wolf cells with 20 gene edits. The chief scientist of the company behind them later called the pups "grey wolves with 20 edits".
Q 09Which Puerto Rican star headlined the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February 2026, with a real wedding on stage?
Bad Bunny
Bad Bunny was the first Latino solo artist to headline the show. A couple who had once invited him to their wedding were legally married in the middle of his set.
Q 10Which sharp-toothed plush monster by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung is sold in sealed blind boxes by Pop Mart?
Labubu
Labubu fans pushed prices to startling heights: a mint-green figure four feet tall sold for more than $150,000 in June 2025 at the first official auction of the toys in Beijing.
Q 11Which country got its first female prime minister in October 2025, a onetime heavy metal drummer?
Japan
Japan chose Sanae Takaichi, who names Margaret Thatcher as her political role model. She played the drums in a band during her university years.
Q 12Which Balkan country gave up the lev in January 2026 to become the eurozone's 21st member?
Bulgaria
Bulgaria retired a currency whose name comes from an old word for lion. The lev had been the country's money since the 1880s.
Q 13Which former governor of the Bank of England became prime minister of Canada in March 2025?
Mark Carney
Mark Carney was the first Canadian prime minister never to have held elected office. He called a federal election almost at once and won it the following month.
Q 21Which Arctic island, a self-governing Danish territory, did Donald Trump threaten to annex from 2025?
Greenland
Greenland is the largest island in the world. The standoff was settled in September 2026 by a defence agreement that gave the United States a bigger military footprint there.
Q 22Who was elected New York City's first Muslim mayor in November 2025, beating Andrew Cuomo?
Zohran Mamdani
Zohran Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, and moved to the city at the age of seven. He was also its youngest mayor since 1892.
Q 23Which German chancellor needed a second parliamentary vote to take office in May 2025, a postwar first?
Friedrich Merz
Q 14Which mountain, North America's highest, did a January 2025 executive order rename Mount McKinley?
Denali
Denali had been the official federal name only since 2015. The same order told US agencies to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
Q 15Which former Mayor of Greater Manchester replaced Keir Starmer as UK prime minister in July 2026?
Andy Burnham
Andy Burnham first had to get back into Parliament. A sitting MP stood aside so he could fight a by-election in Makerfield, which he won a month before taking office.
Q 16Which opposition leader won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize while living in hiding inside Venezuela?
María Corina Machado
María Corina Machado had been barred from running in the 2024 presidential election. She went into hiding soon after the vote, saying she feared for her freedom.
Q 17Protesters in Nepal used a poll on which chat platform to pick interim leader Sushila Karki in 2025?
Discord
Discord members picked Karki, a former chief justice, from a list of five names. She became the first woman to serve as prime minister of Nepal.
Q 18Former chief nurse Sarah Mullally became the first woman in which Church of England post in 2026?
Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury is an office that 105 men held before her. Mullally had earlier been the youngest person to serve as chief nursing officer for England.
Q 19Voters in which country ended Viktor Orbán's 16 years as prime minister in an April 2026 landslide?
Hungary
Hungary gave Péter Magyar's Tisza party 141 seats, a two-thirds supermajority big enough to amend the constitution without help from any other party.
Q 20Which Asian capital did a 2025 UN report rank as the world's most populous city, ahead of Tokyo?
Jakarta
Jakarta floods, jams and sinks so badly that Indonesia plans to move its government to a purpose-built capital called Nusantara.
Friedrich Merz fell six votes short on the first ballot, with 310 of the 316 he needed. A rerun held the same day gave him 325.
Q 24Which African country moved its capital from the island city of Malabo to Ciudad de la Paz in 2026?
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea built its new capital inland, in a region of rainforest. The site was picked partly because a 2004 coup attempt had raised fears about a seat of government reachable by sea.
Q 25Which Brazilian city, the gateway to the Amazon River, hosted the COP30 climate summit in 2025?
Belém
Belém was even made the national capital while the summit ran. A law symbolically moved the seat of government there from Brasília for the duration.
Q 26Which European country's monarch, Henri, abdicated in October 2025 in favour of his son Guillaume?
Luxembourg
Luxembourg has now seen four abdications in a row. Henri's grandmother Charlotte stepped down in 1964, and his father Jean made way for him in 2000.
Q 27What crossed Iceland and the Balearic Islands in August 2026, unseen over mainland Europe since 1999?
A total solar eclipse
A total solar eclipse will not be visible from Iceland again until 2196. Totality lasted longest just off the island's west coast, at 2 minutes 18 seconds.
Q 28Which company became the first in the world valued at five trillion dollars, during 2025's AI boom?
Nvidia
Nvidia had needed less than a year to grow from one trillion dollars to two. The same climb took Apple and Microsoft about two years each.
Q 29Which Chinese AI chatbot overtook ChatGPT as the top free iPhone app in the US in January 2025?
DeepSeek
DeepSeek spooked investors so badly that shares in America's leading AI chipmaker fell about 17 percent in a day. Its R1 model had been released only a week earlier.
Q 30Which games console, launched in June 2025, sold more than 3.5 million units in its first four days?
Nintendo Switch 2
Nintendo Switch 2 became the fastest-selling console its maker had ever released. It arrived eight years after the original Switch, with Mario Kart World bundled at launch.