Announcing the Blizzard Challenge 2025 for Bildts Speech Synthesis

As chair of the special session at the 13th ISCA Speech Synthesis Workshop (SSW13), I’m thrilled to announce this year’s Blizzard Challenge 2025. We’ve chosen to focus on speech synthesis for Bildts, a unique regional language shaped by Dutch and Frisian influences in Fryslân. This challenge represents a step in our field’s commitment to language diversity and technological inclusion.

Shaping the future of Speech Technology

In organizing this special session, we worked to create a framework that pushes our field in new directions. The 2025 challenge, hosted at the University of Groningen’s Faculty Campus Fryslân in Leeuwarden, embodies our theme “Scaling down: sustainable synthesis for language diversity.” This focus reflects our commitment to developing speech technology that serves underrepresented languages and communities.

Innovation in evaluation

One of the key innovations we have introduced is the integration of the Bildts-speaking community into the evaluation process. This approach moves us beyond traditional metrics to embrace community-centered assessment, ensuring our technological advances serve their intended users.

Session details

We will be hosting the Blizzard Challenge session on August 27, 2025, following the main workshop (August 24-26) in Leeuwarden.

Our special session welcomes contributions from researchers, practitioners, and community members. We’re particularly interested in approaches that address:

• Innovative speech synthesis paradigms
• Community-centered development methods
• Sustainable technology solutions for language preservation

Stay tuned for more information about registration and dataset access.