It was formerly considered conspecific with the red-bellied pitta.

It is endemic to the Bismarck Archipelago in Papua New Guinea.

Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests.

The Bismarck pitta was formally described in 1878 by the Australian zoologist Edward Pierson Ramsay from a specimen that had been collected on the island of New Ireland in the Bismarck Archipelago.

[2][3] The Bismarck pitta is now placed in the genus Erythropitta that was introduced 1854 in by Charles Lucien Bonaparte.