2026:Program/Poster session
Liberté, Équité, Fiabilité
Have you completed a great project and want Wikimania to know about the results? Submit a poster.
The Poster session at Wikimania Paris will be a prime event. Refreshments will be served, and attendees will be encouraged to mingle and discuss ideas with poster authors. It is an opportunity for participants to interact with their audience one-on-one, for a longer time, and in greater depth. It will be the primary venue for attendees to showcase their own projects at the conference.
The poster session will happen on Thursday July 23, in the morning (10:30).
This year, posters are the preferred format for presenting a project that has worked well and that you want to share! You will be able to answer questions from the audience during the poster review session.
The poster will be designed by you using the specifications provided by the organizers, printed by the organizers, and displayed throughout the conference.
Prizes for best posters will be awarded. The categories of awards and criterias for assessment will be provided later.
We also plan to organize a discovery game based on the posters' contents to make them more appealing.
Poster author instructions
Submission deadlines
All dates are assumed end-of-day on Earth.
Submit a proposal of poster to the programme by March 1st- Decisions regarding posters send by email on May 15 (tentative)
- The deadline to submit your poster is on June 21.
- Posters will be reviewed by the poster committee, to check if they follow the instructions. You may be asked by the Poster Committee to update your poster for it to be displayed at the conference
- The feedback regarding your poster is posted on Commons, at the poster's talk page.
- Final deadline to submit the final copy: July 5.
Category on Wikimedia Commons
The official category for submitting this year's posters is: category on Commons.
Poster creation instructions
All posters need to meet the following criteria:
- One poster per accepted submission.
- Poster can be in more than one language.
- Poster size/format: A1 (594 × 841 mm, or 23.4 × 33.1 inches), portrait/tall orientation.
- All images are freely licensed with the author credited, the license information, and a url or short url to the file page on Commons or elsewhere. This is the number one thing poster authors forget to do. All images--photos, graphics, etc--must be properly attributed or you will be asked to redo the poster. Remember, we set the standards we expect on reusing our content.
- Limit the text used. Include one or more QR codes to link to more detailed information, reports, instructions, or presentation videos (e.g. on Wiki-Meta, Wikimedia Commons, etc.).
Lay-out
Once the participant chooses the topic they want for their poster, lay out the story in a way that lets other people know what happened, what were the key results, and what (if any) is their advice to the audience. They can also use the ABCDs of Storytelling as a guide to creating the poster. Find more detailed guidance at Posters that work Learning Pattern, and also by looking at posters shown at previous Wikimedia events: Posters created for other Wikimanias
Suggested templates
There are many programs/templates the participant can use to create a poster. It is suggested that Microsoft PowerPoint, LibreOffice Presentation, and LibreOffice Draw are the easiest to use, and make good-looking posters. Other programs like Inkscape have more features, but they are also more difficult to learn, and tools like Adobe InDesign & Illustrator are expensive. Another option is to use Google Draw.
Whichever program/template the participant chooses, organizers request the participant to set the size of the poster before they start adding words and pictures. This will help the participant make sure that the fonts they are using are the right size, and that the pictures they include have high resolutions for printing.
Here are some links that may help participants create a poster of the correct size:
Use of non-photo images
Visual assets
Poster authors can choose to use Wikimania Paris designs, but are also free to stick to any branding they prefer. For those interested, see the Designs page.
AI art
Commons does allow AI art, and in the US at least, art generated entirely by AI is considered uncopyrightable (public domain). But that can vary by country.
The case of Institutional logos
It is common for poster authors to showcase work done in partnership with other organizations. In this case, the poster author may wish use an institutional logo.
Technically, only institution logos that are freely licensed should be used (rare, outside of Wikimedia), or public domain due to them being either too simple to copyright (basic text and geometric shapes) or expired copyright (by being very old).
Most of the institution logos on that poster are simple or old enough to not be copyrightable (the Univerzita Karlova seal, for example, is from the 14th century! so public domain). But a few of the logos are complex enough to be copyrightable, like the Prague Zoo.
Regarding Wikimania 2026 posters, these are the main points related to the use of institutional logos:
- The logos should be considered free, by either being freely licensed (rare), simple enough to be uncopyrightable (basic text and geometric shapes), or old enough to be public domain.
- If a logo is considered uncopyrightable, you don’t technically need attribution on the poster (and any attribution would usually be redundant anyway, since the organization itself is usually who you would attribute).
- If a logo is too complex, some institutions will also have a basic wordmark that is just text that could be used instead (and if they don’t, you could consider cropping the "complex" part out of the logo, as one could do with the Prague Zoo — though not ideal since the logo becomes a bit "unofficial" in that case).
-
In an ideal world, any public domain/uncopyrightable logos used on the posters should also be independently uploaded on Commons (and these can be linked to in the "source" field in the description as good practice).
The team in charge of the poster session can still print and hang posters that use any institutional logo; the poster just may not be able to stay on Wikimedia Commons indefinitely if it doesn’t align with the above main points.
Besides copyright considerations, please keep in mind that some institutions may not approve the use of their logo unless the publication is approved by their legal department. So make sure to check whether the use of the brand material of the institution is acceptable or not. This may require some time, so make sure to secure enough time to figure the situation out.
Final step
Once the poster is complete, the participant must export it to PDF format and open it in a PDF reader to ensure that everything displays correctly. Some questions the participant might ask oneself are:
Minimum requirements
- Are my pictures blurry?
- Have I properly attributed all media I've used?
- Is my text aligned?
- Is my text big enough to be clearly legible?
- Is my text free of typos?
- Have I used any materials that are copyrighted and thus need to be removed? As you will be uploading to Commons, please ensure all elements are available under a CC license.
Things to consider
- Does my poster have text that explains what it means when the author is not around?
- Is my poster overwhelmed with text? Try to include only the highlights so people can easily read it.
- Are the pictures relevant?
- Is the author(s) contact information clearly displayed?
Responsibilities
- Create your poster and upload it to Commons category Wikimania 2026 posters by according to schedule.
- Be on the lookout for any feedback from reviewers on your poster's talkpage and be prepared to upload a new version of your poster in the event that there are typos, missing attributions for photos, or other issues.
- Poster authors do not need to print or hang their posters themselves, the event organizers will take care of that.
- Poster authors are invited to stand with their posters during the session to discuss the topic in person with the attendees. If you can't attend in person, you can delegate someone. Please let the organizers know about this substitution.
Review process
The review process will be managed by a team of volunteers. More information available at : 2026:Program/Poster review process