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50 free 2020 Year in Review trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
2020 was the year the world stayed home. A virus first quarantined in Wuhan shut down Olympics, Eurovision and Broadway, the NBA finished its season inside a Disney World bubble, and a 90-year-old in Coventry got the first approved vaccine shot in December. These 2020 trivia questions cover the whole year in review: Parasite's Best Picture win, Tiger King and Animal Crossing, Kobe Bryant and Chadwick Boseman, Folklore, the US election, SpaceX's first crewed flight and the closest Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in four centuries. Every answer is sourced and explained.
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Q 01Which film became the first non-English-language movie to win Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars?
Parasite
Bong Joon-ho's thriller took four awards that night, including Best Director. It is also one of only a handful of films to win both the Palme d'Or and Best Picture.
Q 02Which Chinese city was placed under quarantine on 23 January 2020, with all transport halted?
Wuhan
The lockdown of an 11-million-person city was unprecedented in scale. The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern a week later.
Q 03On which date in 2020 did the World Health Organization declare COVID-19 a pandemic?
March 11
The WHO had named the disease COVID-19 exactly one month earlier, on February 11. Italy had become the first country under nationwide quarantine two days before the declaration.
Q 04Which country was the first to impose a nationwide quarantine in response to COVID-19?
Italy
The order came on March 9, 2020, the same day a Russo-Saudi oil price war sent the Dow down more than 2,000 points.
Q 05Which team won Super Bowl LIV in February 2020, beating the San Francisco 49ers 31–20?
Kansas City Chiefs
Patrick Mahomes led a fourth-quarter comeback from 10 points down. It was the franchise's first title in 50 years.
Q 06Who co-headlined the Super Bowl LIV halftime show with Shakira?
Jennifer Lopez
The game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens drew about 103 million US viewers, with an uptick during the halftime performance.
Q 07Which basketball legend died with his daughter Gianna in a helicopter crash in January 2020?
Kobe Bryant
Nine people died when the Sikorsky S-76 went down in heavy fog near Calabasas, California. The other three options also died in 2020.
Q 08Where did the NBA finish its 2019–20 season inside a bio-secure bubble?
Walt Disney World
Las Vegas and Houston were considered before the league settled on Bay Lake, Florida. Players checked in with the same MagicBands theme-park guests use as hotel keys.
Q 09Which team won the 2020 NBA Finals, beating the Miami Heat 4–2?
Los Angeles Lakers
It was the franchise's 17th championship. LeBron James won Finals MVP, the only player to earn the award with three different teams.
Q 10At which neutral ballpark was the entire 2020 World Series played?
Globe Life Field
Capacity in Arlington, Texas was limited to 25 percent, about 11,500 fans. It was the first ballpark to host a World Series in its inaugural season since the original Yankee Stadium.
Q 11The Dodgers' 2020 World Series title was their first since which year?
1988
The 32-year wait ended with a six-game win over the Tampa Bay Rays. Both 1965 and 1981 were also Dodgers championship seasons.
Q 12Which Nintendo Switch game released on March 20, 2020 became a lockdown phenomenon?
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
It had been announced at a Nintendo Direct back in September 2018 and delayed to get it right. It became the fastest game ever to sell six million copies in Japan.
Q 13Which studio developed Among Us, the social deduction game that exploded in 2020?
Innersloth
Q 21Which long-time Jeopardy! host died in November 2020 at age 80?
Alex Trebek
He had hosted for 36 years and kept taping through 20 months of pancreatic cancer treatment. Regis Philbin also died in 2020, in July.
Q 22The so-called murder hornet made 2020 headlines after nests were found in which US state?
Washington
The first North American sightings came in 2019 around Vancouver and neighbouring Whatcom County. Its real name is the Asian giant hornet; the nickname was a media invention.
Q 23On which date were the Tokyo Olympics postponed to 2021, the first postponement in Games history?
March 24
Canada and Australia had announced the day before that they would not send athletes in 2020. Previous Games had been cancelled outright but never rescheduled.
Co-founder Marcus Bromander based the idea on the party game Mafia. Mediatonic made 2020's other surprise hit, Fall Guys.
Q 14Among Us went viral in 2020, but in which year was it originally released?
2018
It launched on iOS and Android under the app ID 'spacemafia' and averaged 30 to 50 concurrent players. Twitch streamers turned it into a pandemic staple two years later.
Q 15Which album did Taylor Swift surprise-release on July 24, 2020?
Folklore
Written remotely with Aaron Dessner of The National, it caught the music business off guard. Its sister album Evermore followed in December.
Q 16Swift's 2020 album made her the first woman to win the Album of the Year Grammy how many times?
Three
That tied her with Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. Fearless and 1989 were the earlier winners.
Q 17The Last Dance, 2020's hit docuseries, focused on which Chicago Bulls season?
1997–98
It was Michael Jordan's final season with the team. ESPN moved the series up from June to April because fans had no live sport to watch.
Q 18Chadwick Boseman died in August 2020 after a private four-year battle with which illness?
Colon cancer
He filmed Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame while undergoing treatment, a fact unknown to the public until his death.
Q 19Which fictional chess prodigy did Anya Taylor-Joy play in The Queen's Gambit?
Beth Harmon
Within four weeks of release the show was Netflix's most-watched scripted miniseries and its top program in 63 countries. Chess set sales spiked worldwide.
Q 20Which show swept all seven comedy categories at the 2020 Primetime Emmys?
Schitt's Creek
Dan and Eugene Levy became the first father-son duo to win Emmys in the same year. The virtual ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel from an empty Staples Center.
Q 24Which 2020 hit spent 90 weeks on the Hot 100 and was later named its best-performing song ever?
Blinding Lights
The Weeknd's synth-pop single never spent more than four weeks at number one, but it refused to leave the chart. Its TikTok dance challenge helped.
Q 25On which date in 2020 did the filmed Broadway production of Hamilton arrive on Disney+?
July 3
It had been slated for cinemas in October 2021. The Disney+ app was downloaded 266,084 times that weekend, a 72 percent jump.
Q 26Which rock guitarist died of a stroke on October 6, 2020, at age 65?
Eddie Van Halen
His son Wolfgang, the band's bassist, and ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli were at his side. All four musicians listed died in 2020.
Q 27Which Christopher Nolan film was the big-budget test of reopened cinemas in 2020?
Tenet
Nolan spent more than five years on the screenplay. It was his final film distributed by Warner Bros. before he moved to Universal.
Q 28Sean Connery died on 31 October 2020 at his home in which country?
Bahamas
The original James Bond was 90 and lived in the Lyford Cay community of Nassau. He had also spent years in Marbella, Spain.
Q 29Tiger King followed Joe Exotic's feud with which big-cat rescue owner?
Carole Baskin
The series landed on Netflix on March 20, 2020, the same day as Animal Crossing, right as lockdowns began. Her Big Cat Rescue is in Tampa, Florida.
Q 30Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first person outside trials to receive which COVID-19 vaccine?
Pfizer–BioNTech
She got her jab in Coventry on 8 Dec 2020, a week before her 91st birthday. Brian Pinker, 82, was first in line for the Oxford shot the following January.