Badges are used to show states of e.g. pipelines and jobs. They can also be exported and shown in http or markdown files, to integrate cross project badges.
Find more about badges
To create a project badge, open the project in gitlab and go to “Settings” → “General” and expand “Badges”. Now 3 text fields will open:

• name
• link
• Badge image URL

Example configuration for a badge to show the latest-release name:
This configuration links to the project page. Linking to other project sub-pages is also possible.
Most important is the Badge Image URL which describes what to show. As seen in the picture a path below the project page is set. With “-” the default branch is selected.
Note: The path order can be different depending on the badge.
Another and more common example is the pipeline badge. In this case it links directly to the project pipelines.
As mentioned the path order is a little bit different to the release badge.