2026 talk:Wikimania

Before you write here...

Before you write your message here, please check if you are raising a public enquiry related to Wikimania 2026 or if you are raising concern or suggestion about Wikimania which may involve sensitive or personal information.
If you are raising a concern or suggestion about Wikimania which may involve sensitive or personal information, we advise you send an email message to wikimaniawikimedia.org and not posting on this talk page. This is for your own safety. Thank you. --Exec8 (talk) 17:00, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

When will program submissions open?

TIA for an answer Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 04:25, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

The call for submissions for the program will open in early January 2026. SanBonne (talk) 09:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Hanyangprofessor2, the submissions will open in early January 2026, stay tuned! Thanks. Dyolf77 (talk) 09:53, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

@Hanyangprofessor2:, the organizers had started the call for proposals. Visit 2026:Program to know more. It closes 1 March 2026. -- Exec8 (talk) 14:55, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Scholarship resubmittion

Hello. I was just looking at the questions on the scholarship form and didn't mean to actually submit it. Please toss out my malformed request, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:27, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Just tried to create my actual request and was told that I couldn't do so, having already submitted one, and have sent an email (had thought that posting here would be enough) requesting an extension if this isn't figured out early today. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:45, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Internationalization

Hi all! Please note for my requests in MediaWiki talk:Sidebar and Talk:About.
Also, i'm update Wikimania:MediaWiki pages with translations and Template:Mediawiki message check. Kaganer (talk) 21:11, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Conference venue known?

Is the conference venue confirmed in Paris? Or at least, is it known in what district / arrondissement it will be held? Bluerasberry (talk) 16:37, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Came here to ask this. Some of us are coming from very far away and need to plan flights travel and accommodation. I'm coming from New Zealand, and the only way I can be further away from Paris is by being in space. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 07:12, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Pinging the communication team - @Afek91 and Lexy Tchuileu: Bluerasberry (talk) 19:48, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

I believe the organizing team provided some answers at a diff post. — Exec8 (talk) 16:50, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, @Exec8:. This is an exact quote from your link:

• "For those that are self funding or self booking, we recommend booking your accommodation in the northeast part of Paris, along line 7 for easy transport to the conference spaces."

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/12/19/looking-ahead-to-wikimania-2026/ (published 19 December 2025)

I appreciate and fully support everyone who has put in the hard work and effort into organizing this Wikimania and other meetings across our movement. However, timely decision-making and communication—particularly regarding venue, scholarships, visas, and other travel-related arrangements—have consistently been a pain point. Unless improvements are explicitly and publicly announced and benchmarked, it is difficult to see sustained long-term progress.

That said, "northeast part of Paris, along line 7" is safe enough to proceed for this time. The level of advice provided, however, would not have been sufficient in the case of Nairobi.

P.S. While many of us are fortunate enough to make arrangements despite uncertainty, others are effectively prevented from participating due to financial constraints, visa requirements, employer policies, or similar barriers. This is not only an equity issue but also an efficiency one: without sufficient advance information, highly productive volunteers—often those with demanding professional responsibilities—are less able to plan ahead and participate meaningfully. The opposite may be true in some cases, where participation skews toward less productive people with fewer external responsibilities rather than toward those best positioned to contribute, an outcome we should seek to minimize.

--taweethaも (talk) 04:46, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Neighborhoods

Here is Google Gemini's AI interpretation of the conference recommendations of convenient neighborhoods close to the conference venue. @Taweetham: thanks for reiterating how a few minute of planning notice can save many international attendees a lot of time and money.

• 10th Arrondissement
  • Canal Saint-Martin (Stops: Louis Blanc, Château-Landon)
• 19th Arrondissement
  • La Villette (Stops: Stalingrad, Riquet, Crimée, Corentin Cariou)
  • Pont de Flandre (Stops: Corentin Cariou, Porte de la Villette)
  • Aubervilliers & Pantin (Stops: Quatre Chemins, Fort d'Aubervilliers)

Bluerasberry (talk) 15:07, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry Thanks for sharing further details. --taweethaも (talk) 13:08, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

If you need to confirm if the area you picked for your accommodation is fine, you can contact wikimania-AT-wikimedia.org, privately. Trizek ^{from fr:} 11:38, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

YouTube live chat

Since the success of Wikipedia 25 live chat, should Wikimania 2026 do the same? Ahri Boy (talk) 00:45, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Wikimania 2026 online chat is available upon regular registration, which will happen closer to the event. You will be given instructions about the online features like chat via email once registered. -- Exec8 (talk) 15:01, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Is 2026:Travel missing information? Ahri Boy (talk) 02:10, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

@Ahri Boy, it will be updated very soon. Thanks for waiting. Dyolf77 (talk) 09:00, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, Dyolf. Ahri Boy (talk) 05:47, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Sold out, but not advertised

I'm a bit surprised to see it was sold out without really being advertised on Wikipedia. Most highly experienced editors who are constantly online didn't manage to get tickets. What happened here? Where did it get advertised? Or are people just much more organised than me? Femke (talk) 20:49, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

As an English Wikipedia admin who was also looking forward to assisting, I completely share your concerns, especially since I will likely have to cancel two talks I had planned because of that. I am looking forward for more clarity about what happened. Chaotic Enby (talk) 20:52, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there a possibility of getting a larger venue? It seems like basically no WUER (from enwiki at least) managed to get a ticket. Femke (talk) 21:39, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

+1 to the above, the fact that the ticket sold out before they were announced to be open onwiki severely disadvantages contributors that spend their time editing the wiki (which makes up the bulk of our contributors) from going to the conference. Sohom Datta (talk) 03:39, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm really concerned that this was apparently advertised on Telegram, yet I can't find any onwiki advertisement. I'm also disappointed that the capacity was so limited – it seems obvious that a conference in a major, highly-accessible city near a large proportion of the movement would have high demand, and yet at 1000 in-person attendees capacity is significantly lower than many past Wikimanias. I really hope the organizers are able to find a solution here, whether this is finding additional space for the event or some form of merit-based screening of attendees. Toadspike (talk) 07:33, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

+1 to all of the above. I would like to understand why news of ticket availability was announced on Telegram before other more inclusive and appropriate venues and how that decision was made. I don't understand how it benefits Wikimedia for the people who are the most involved in those projects to be excluded from attending one of Wikimedia's most important events. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 22:26, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Announcements outside the proper Wikiverse, thus in the projects, but in some shady backrooms, is a complete no-go. Registration must not start before it was announced properly, and only on-wiki is proper, telegram is everything but proper, it's deliberately exclusive. Sänger (talk) 09:25, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Let's not assume bad faith here. Communication onwiki was planned, and organisers did not expect this to be at capacity so fast. Femke (talk) 13:44, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

There is no assumption of bad faith, but communication onwiki should have been the primary channel, and be ready when the registration opened. Chaotic Enby (talk) 14:14, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Not bad faith, just assuming sloppiness.

Nothing is valid in the Wikiverse, if it's not a) on-wiki and b) translated in at least 20 languages. No registration to anything for the whole wikiverse must ever be started, before that criteria are fulfilled. For certain sub-groups perhaps their venues are enough, but for Wikimania telegram is a shady backroom, nothing even remotely valid for announcements.

Publish on at least 95% of all projects in at least 20 languages, wait for at least a few days, and then, only then, anything can start properly. This way here was deception of the normal wikimedians, not with malice, but with utter thoughtlessness. Sänger (talk) 14:25, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

BTW: This seems to be quite a recurring topic, that those far detached from the real editing projects in their ivory towers assume, that the real wikimedians use as well such esoteric venues like usenet, telegram, X, IRC, discord or whatever. No, on-wiki is the only valid way. Sänger (talk) 15:35, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Why just the meager number of 1000 participants?

Why did you plan for this 25th anniversary Wikimania in Europe just with this extreme meager number of participants? !000 in Europe or North America is even in normal times far too little, but for the 25th birthday it was absolutely clear, that at least 2000 slots, better perhaps 3000 should have been the planning number. It was even clear before this desaster was started, that it would be a disaster, if you would have looked at ther numbers of former Wikimania participations. Sänger (talk) 07:53, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@Sänger pretty sure the venue would not fit those kind of numbers you are suggesting, considering that during the 2024 Olympics it only accommodated a single representation, which was Canada House. Braveheart (talk) 14:54, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Then it was the wrong venue to start planning with. 1000 ist just a complete planning disaster, the venue has to fit the expected participants, if it's too small, it's unfit for the Wikimania.

Yes, now it's too late to move Wikimania to a fitting venue, but the decision for this one was complete rubbish. Sänger (talk) 17:18, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Your remark suggests, that the venue was first, and then someone tried to find some meeting to host there, and came up with the Wikimania, regardless whether it's suitable or not, just because this someone liked the venue so much.

That's of course a complete wrong process, first you have to estimate, how many people will probably come to the Wikimania, in the year of the 25th anniversary in central Europe, and then start looking for venues, that fits this number of people. Looking at the graph, 1500 should have been the minimum planning size, even for a regular year, better 2000. But somehow this small venue, where it's done now, popped up, I don't have the faintest clue, why it was decided, to use this small venue for Wikimania, it has to be something, that didn't took the participants into account. Sänger (talk) 05:43, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand the graphs - the number from London includes a lot of foot traffic, plus the Barbican is a way bigger venue. For Esino Lario a whole village was the venue.

Try finding a bigger venue in Paris, even 2 years out, without paying absurd amounts of money. Wikimania itself does not add any value to the Wikimedia communities in its current form, so why spend even more money on an event with little to no tangible outcomes? Braveheart (talk) 06:35, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Hotels & Airfare

The 2026:Hotels & Airfare Discounts page is still a red link. Do we have an ETA for its publication, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:42, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Pigsonthewing, registered attendees will receive an email with hotel discount information within a few days. Adélaïde Calais WMFr (talk) 07:07, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

I have today received an email with a section saying "Hotels. There are many accommodation options in the area, and we’ve put together this hotel map to assist in booking." and linking to .

It says nothing about "hotel discount information".

The above link is still red. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:19, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

2026 talk:Scholarships

Seems like nobody is answering questions posted there...

Anyway, I'd like to ask: I applied for a scholarship, the Wikimania page says results are announced - where? I didn't receive any email (at least that uses the heading/word Wikimania). Piotrus (talk) 03:24, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Piotrus, could you contact wikimania-scholarships[AT]wikimedia.org please ? The scholarship team will .give you your answer. It's possible that the email bounced or went to spam and got deleted automatically after 30 days (depending on your inbox setups). Adélaïde Calais WMFr (talk) 07:04, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Payment method

It may reassure some to know that, although the only option on the payment form is "Credit card", I just successfully ticked that option and paid with a debit card. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:07, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Venue

I think it is no safety risk to publish the Venue publicly. From my point of view the number of participants at Wikimania is so high that it is not realistic it is kept within the group where the venue will be. If it is announced publicly I think it gives also more trust for people who wished to attend and have not been able because of lower capacity of the venue as number of people requesting a ticket. So far I trust the french Police and security agencies pay attention there is not a high security risk at the event. So please think about publishing the venue of the Wikimania 2026 publicly soon. At least I think it can be published after the Wikimania 2026 is over if you do not want to publish it before. Hogü-456 (talk) 19:57, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

This ↑

I also noticed it's still not disclosed even after Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 11:50, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

en:Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (the pics give away the big secret e.g. ) MBq (talk) 19:07, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Hope they will do the same in Santiago. Wikimania could be a great tourist attraction. Ahri Boy (talk) 18:43, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

The wikimedia.eventyay.com website doesn't work in Russia

The wikimedia.eventyay.com website doesn't work in Russia. Some pages open, but without styles or images, and some don't open at all. Since the Russian government hasn't blocked eventyay.com, it's likely the site itself is geoblocked. I consider any blocking of access to internet resources — a restriction of human rights, including geoblocking — discriminatory and unacceptable, but it's especially unacceptable for Wikimedia. Don Stroud (talk) 06:04, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

EU sanctions rulings would force services to comply or risk getting denied service in Europe. Ahri Boy (talk) 13:21, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Eventyay is relying on Cloudflare and YouTube, which is throttled by Russian ISPs. cloudflare link, youtube block news. Robertsky (talk) 21:07, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Telegram chat issue

Hi there,

I am trying to join the Telegram channel that I was sent a link to in my initial virtual registration email and is available on the Wiki but the link only leads me to a loading screen that does not show anything identifying that this belongs to Wikimania. I have signed up for an account on the iOS app. What might I be doing wrong?

Thanks for your help. Qwerty123M (talk) 04:56, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Feedback

First, many thanks to the organizing committee for all the work they did. Second, some friendly criticism… For the well-known reason, I only attended online, and I was dissatisfied. A great many sessions had no stream, there were minimal opportunities for online interaction, and the number of online participants was correspondingly very low—mostly in the single digits, except for the plenary sessions. I found this better in Nairobi. What do the on-site participants have to say about the event? MBq (talk) 07:51, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I'll note that a significant proportion of the opening/closing event seemed to be in languages not in English. I was unable to find any evidence of live transcription or multiple audio streams. Machine translation thought that the whole video was in English so it wasn't of much use. Leaderboard (talk) 15:52, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on this. I'm responding as someone who works with eventyay on Wikimania and also attended virtually this year.

@Leaderboard curious whether you attended on eventyay or YouTube? Eventyay had live interpretation supporting four languages in four different rooms throughout the event, which you could select from a simple drop-down. If watching on YouTube (not the main venue for virtual attendees) you would have had to find the other language streams separately. For the most part, when there was content in languages besides English, the live interpretation into English was available on eventyay by selecting "English" from the language drop-down.

But yes @MBq I totally understand. Recognizing that there is no way to make the virtual experience fully feel like the in-person experience, and keeping in mind that eventyay is a streaming platform and not a video conference software, I think there were some improvements that were experimented with this year that could be expanded upon. I'll note first that, for the vast majority of sessions that had no stream, it was because the session owners chose not to record or stream those sessions. Keeping that option for speakers that want to speak on topics they'd prefer not to have recorded is important year over year.

That said, there are three things in particular I really liked that this year's Core Organizing Team experimented with that I feel have more potential to develop. Definitely curious on your thoughts as well. The first is active room managers that more regularly moderated chat and voiced comments and questions from the online chat for the onsite audience/speakers. It wasn't necessarily 100%, but I noticed it much more than previous years. That bridge is important for helping both audiences feel connected, and it would be great to keep improving consistency on this year over year. The second was a Virtual Room with programming mainly during downtimes during the onsite program (breaks, lunches, right before or after the conference) so that the online audience wouldn't experience as much of a lull in programming during certain hours. It would be great to continue to innovate with virtual-specific programming. The third was a fun tool that took comments from the eventyay chat during the closing ceremony and projected them onto the big stage screen live. I had a lot of fun with this and would love to see it built out and used during more of the event in the future.

Curious about your thoughts on these points and others. Also curious what you found better in Nairobi - if there's anything that you liked that wasn't carried forward in the virtual experience, I'd be interested to hear it. ELappen (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

We need more English language interpreters, the opening ceremony stream didn't have a proper English language stream. Ahri Boy (talk) 05:35, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi @ELappen (WMF) on YouTube (after the event concluded). I think a single video with multiple live audio streams (or at least subtitling) would have been better? Leaderboard (talk) 07:09, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much Elena for your detailed statement and the questions. I really appreciate that. It's always easy to comment when you don't have the responsibility yourself. That's why I would like to start by saying that we already have a high level and that the meeting was very useful for me overall. Nevertheless, I thought about how to make the event more attractive and productive, especially for online participants.

• From my experience during the COVID period with many online events, I have learned that it is good to separate the general chitchat and banter from content-related contributions. If an online-only participant wants to interact directly with the panel, there should be a reserved way for this, such as a Q&A function, independent of the chat. It would also be a great improvement if you could turn on the microphone and camera if necessary, of course with the approval of the local people.
• In order to exchange documents that are referred to in the talk or discussion, there could be a temporary directory that we can access via upload and download.
• Speakers and presenters can be informed during planning that there will also be lots of online participants, they could be strongly encouraged to have their sessions streamed if possible, and they could even be offered tools to involve our group. For example polls, commenting-to-screen, or word clouds.
• In addition to providing information and discussion, Wikimania (as understood by me) is also intended to serve as a community networking opportunity. It is certainly much easier to talk spontaneously with other participants when everyone is on site. But sometimes you also want to get in touch with others as an online participant. If, for example, you have found the same interests or a similar field of knowledge. The portal could offer support for this. Above all, I missed a searchable list of participants through which you can get some info and send personal messages.
• It would also be nice to have an open meeting only for online participants for free conversations. Of course, someone would have to moderate it... So this would involve work and perhaps costs.

Yust a few ideas, some of them might be stupid or impossible. Perhaps there is no software available that would offer all of these possibilities. But maybe you could find and try one or two innovations in Santiago? I am sure that the many thousands of Wikipedians who are interested in Wikimania but aren't able or willing to travel that far would take it very positively. Thank you again for your interest in our feedback and for your valuable work in organizing our most important event! Greetings --MBq (talk) 09:43, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Apologies in advance for the wall of text :D

@Leaderboard On Eventyay, it appears as a single video with multiple live audio streams that you can choose between. That's a big reason why Eventyay is the preferred platform for live viewing. This is not possible live on YouTube sadly, and creating this audio experience, as far as I know, can only be done once the stream has concluded. So it would be a different body of work to add audio or multilingual captions after the event concludes, as you're describing - to my knowledge not so sustainable or practical across hundreds of sessions, but in theory could be worth taking on if we got signals that lots of people were watching for example the opening and closing after-the-fact (I'm not super convinced of this, though).

And thanks @MBq for taking the time to outline these things! Happy to go point by point!

• Eventyay actually has the capacity to do chat and a separate Q&A window simultaneously. We experimented with this in Katowice, but found that because chat volume isn't so high, questions don't tend to get lost. The inverse was actually true - when we enabled Q&A, questions got lost as not everyone notices that section. It also added another space moderators had to moderate. We thought it was better not to fragment the discussion and instead task moderators with finding and voicing the questions. If we get to a place where chat volume is really high (which would be great!) I agree this would be a good option. And it's easy to turn on.
• All session pages have a Resources section where speakers can link documents for their session (click into any session in the program and you'll see - most people at a minimum link slides but others also link etherpads, activities and more). I agree with your point though and I think we need to: 1) find way to get speakers to add more to their session pages beyond just slides (we remind them about slides many times but could add other media to that) and 2) bridge the session pages with the live sessions; the virtual audience watching a live session reasonably isn't referring back to the session page while they watch. Maybe we should ask chat moderators to drop session pages at the start of each session in chat... open to other ideas here of course!
• We sent an email to all speakers, in particular workshop owners, asking them to please plan for the virtual audience. We provided suggestions like online polls, etherpads, and other activities to be able to engage both in-person and virtual audiences simultaneously, and recommended they find a point person to support the virtual audience throughout. Some did, some didn't. But I actually think a solution here might be to be more selective with what we stream, and only assign sessions to a room with streaming that have shown in their proposal that they have a solid plan for the virtual audience. This would change default expectations a bit, but would ensure we stream out sessions that are inclusive of both audiences. Open to ideas here as well about how to accomplish this.
• Eventyay actually has this too! It also has the ability to find people by checking who else "star"d the sessions youve "star"d, as a place to start networking over common interests. Attendees complained this year that they felt exposure caused privacy concerns. As a result we had to make all attendees anonymous. But the purpose of the feature is exactly this - to allow for searching and networking. I actually think it's quite a nice feature for the reasons you've described, but I also respect some people don't want their information visible. I am hoping we may be able to commission a toggle in people's profile pages to allow them to make a selection here in future years. Also open to other suggestions on this!
• We're limited on-platform to chat, but if you think a chat room for virtual attendees could work, that may be a path forward. We've also experimented in previous years with sending people to Zoom or similar to have conversations. Curious if you have other thoughts here as well.

Thanks again! --ELappen (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Twitch would be a great option, as gamers haven't stepped into editing Wikipedia for the first time. Ahri Boy (talk) 21:55, 31 July 2026 (UTC)