The Wikimedia Foundation’s Annual Plan is the story of the work that it plans to do each year.

This update shares highlights from January to June 2025, rounding out the picture of what we have achieved together in 2024–2025 and how it prepares us for the fiscal 2025-2026. In case you missed our earlier update (July to December 2024), you can find it here. 

Infrastructure

Nearly half of the Foundation’s budget each year goes to product and technology support for the Wikimedia projects. This work is divided into three pillars:  Wiki Experiences, Future Audiences, and Signals and Data Services.

Wiki Experiences

We are improving Wiki Experiences so that consumers and readers want to return, engage more deeply, and contribute in ways that are meaningful to them. This objective includes work to respond to the reuse of Wikimedia content across the internet, and also ways to support contributors and improve their experience – including with machine-learning and AI tools.

Contributor & Consumer Experience

This year, we continued to prioritize work that protects the privacy of Wikimedia contributors. We introduced Edge Uniques, a privacy-preserving first-party cookie – a small text file on a user’s computer – designed to help us improve our user experiences for contributors on the projects, understand our readers better, and defend against attacks that flood our websites with bad traffic. 

Protecting the privacy of our contributors

To keep Wikimedia logins secure and compatible with new privacy rules recently introduced by web browser software, we also completed the rollout of Single User Login (SUL3). This system allows users to log in on one Wikimedia site and be automatically logged in across all wikis. This improves account security and makes sure Wikimedia logins continue to work under new browser rules that block cross-domain cookies. Using a single domain also makes things easier for users with password managers and sets the stage for stronger authentication. 

Tools for content creators and editors

As part of our efforts to respond to users’ needs, we also implemented Template Discovery, which allows contributors to mark their favorite templates – used to help contributors with things like formatting articles or displaying navigation on specific topics. Within a short time after its launch in June, we saw strong engagement, with 1,276 users adding at least one favorite and 144 users adding five or more.

Tools for community organizers and administrators

To give users more ways to connect with other contributors, the CampaignEvents extension was rolled out to all Wikipedias. This tool makes it easier for communities to discover opportunities, collaborate, and organize around shared interests. Now, organizers of different Wikimedia events and other activities like editathons are able to specify what kind of event they are hosting as they enable people to register.

Volunteer administrators now have more flexibility in managing user behavior with the full rollout of Multiblocks in the Community Wishlist, the #14 wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. This new feature enables administrators to apply different types of moderation blocks to the same user, providing more nuanced tools for moderating content and behavior. 

Sustainable reuse of Wikimedia infrastructure

In the age of AI, we are seeing increased interest in and use of Wikipedia by generative AI tools. However, AI is not new to Wikipedia, and the projects have been using machine learning tools for many years. In our last fiscal year, we published a new artificial intelligence strategy for editors grounded in a core Wikimedia principle: our content is valuable because it comes from humans. AI should only be used to support human work, not replace it. The strategy looks at how AI could help by cutting down on repetitive tasks, making editing tools easier, and helping people find information faster. Any AI tools for content contributors would remain fully optional. With input from the community, we are also exploring how it could support translation, welcoming newcomers, moderation, and editing more broadly through checks and suggestions.

Supporting the work of contributors also means protecting the sustainability of the knowledge they create. Our content is free, but the infrastructure that delivers it is not. As more of the internet pulls from our content, we need sustainable ways for developers and reusers to access content. Recently, we began addressing this challenge, setting a major focus on sustainable access to Wikimedia content in the Foundation’s upcoming Annual Plan. Re-establishing this balance will allow us to dedicate resources where they matter most: supporting the projects, volunteers, and human access to knowledge.

Technical contributor support

At the same time, we advanced our support for technical volunteers and developers. We took the first steps towards improving Wikimedia’s web (HTTP) APIs with the goal of making them easier to learn and maintain, so that all technical contributors can build new tools and features faster. We also introduced a unified Built-in Notifications system in MediaWiki 1.44, giving volunteer developers an easier way to send, manage, and customize notifications across projects.

From January to June, we resolved a total of 688 volunteer-reported issues in Phabricator. For example, the global blocks log will now be shown directly on the Special:CentralAuth page, similarly to global locks, to simplify the workflows for stewards. We have also resolved bugs in areas you might have noticed, like the Visual Editor, and the Android Wikipedia App, among others. 

Further improving the mobile experience

We have continued to improve the reading and editing experience on our apps. Responding to more than 150 requests from the community, we launched an A/B test of tabbed browsing in the Wikipedia iOS app. Tabbing allows readers to open multiple articles in separate tabs, making it easier to explore related topics or return to previous articles. On iOS, we also released the Navigation Refresh to make search and navigation smoother, rolled out Temporary Accounts support to better protect unregistered contributors, and ran an Activity Tab experiment to test whether a centralized space could increase engagement. 

On Android, we rolled out WikiTrivia, advanced accessibility through user testing and prototyping for text-to-speech, and launched Discover with Recommended Reading Lists to help readers explore articles tailored to their interests. These updates build on our goal of making the apps more engaging, personal, and accessible for readers and contributors worldwide.

Helping new contributors with their first edits

We continued focusing on ways to make editing easier and more intuitive for new content contributors, while also reducing the burden on moderators by adding various edit checks and completing research to enable new checks (Tone Check and Paste Check) and suggestions. These checks are designed to help users make high-quality edits they can feel confident about. Our goal was to improve new contributor morale by providing real-time support that increases the likelihood their edits will be accepted rather than reverted.

Earlier this year, we released the “Add a Link” structured task to 100% of newcomers on English Wikipedia and saw it help increase both the number of accounts that successfully get started editing and the overall constructive edit rate among newer contributors.

Citation work also became simpler for newcomers with the release of Multi Check to most Wikipedias. Contributors can now view multiple reference suggestions while adding new content, making it easier to provide citations when writing many new paragraphs at once. 

Future audiences

In the second half of this fiscal year, we tested new ways to reach young people through short videos and games. Last year, we began publishing short-form videos on Wikimedia’s social channels and launched a TikTok channel. By January 2025, these experiments had reached millions of 18–24-year-olds, gained thousands of followers, boosted pageviews, and sparked community interest. Recently, we also launched an educational Roblox game, which drew 9,800 plays and 643.8 hours of gameplay in its first weekend, although retention was low. A new version is planned for the near future, with improvements to gameplay and features that encourage curiosity about Wikipedia and love for learning.

The Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC), a one-year pilot where the community and Foundation work jointly to advise on product and technology priorities, came together for its first in-person meeting. Over three days, the group dug into tough questions about where to focus our resources. Out of the four areas explored (mobile, new editor experiences, admin support, and image uploads), PTAC agreed that improving mobile contributions would have the biggest impact. Their recommendation, along with community feedback, informed the Foundation’s Fiscal Year 2025–26 Annual Plan.

Volunteer Support

The Foundation has merged two of its goals together to create the Volunteer Support goal, which is focused on supporting and protecting the people who contribute to Wikimedia projects at all levels, and the social systems essential for growing these contributions. 

Closing knowledge gaps

Multilingualism is one of the superpowers of the Wikimedia movement, with Wikipedia projects in over 300 languages. This year we made several substantive improvements to the content translation tool, including the addition of the Personalized Translation Suggestion feature. By providing content contributors with article suggestions based on their interests, it becomes easier for them to identify and translate topics that may be missing in smaller Wikipedias. The new unified dashboard also keeps everything simple and easy to use, both on desktop and mobile.

We laid the groundwork for Abstract Wikipedia, which aims to help people create and maintain Wikipedia articles in a language-independent way, by enabling Wikifunctions integrations on one Wikipedia (Dagbani) and five Wiktionaries (Bengali, Divehi, Hausa, Igbo, and Malayalam).

Meanwhile, prioritizing improvements targeting copyright compliance on Wikimedia Commons reduced copyright violations by ~50% and increased uploads with captions from 40% to 90%. By minimizing the possibility that contributors upload media that might trigger a deletion request,  we have reduced a significant moderation burden for users with extended rights. 

Grants to Wikimedia communities

In addition to our ongoing work to strengthen the movement through grants to Wikimedia communities, On English Wikipedia, we introduced a pilot project to fund small resource requests, such as books to help contributors improve articles. So far, over 20 books have been delivered, directly supporting content contributors in their efforts to continue growing and strengthening Wikipedia’s content.

Fostering connections across the movement 

In May 2025, more than 200 people from over 30 countries came together in Istanbul, Türkiye, for the 12th Wikimedia Hackathon, held in partnership with Wikimedia Türkiye. Over the course of three days, participants learned from one another, worked on projects, and connected with fellow contributors from the Wikimedia technical community.

“Attending these events lets you gauge the intensity of passion, knowledge, and tireless dedication that goes into making the Wikimedia movement successful”. –TheProtonade

The Foundation also provided communications and event programming support to other conferences, including Wiki Mentor Africa,  WikiLibCon 2025, ESEAP strategy summit, Edu Wiki Conference, and the Youth Conference. At WikiLibCon 2025 – co-hosted by Wikimedia and Libraries User Group, Wikimedia México, and the Wikimedia Foundation – Wikimedians and librarians worked together on ways to address disinformation while prioritizing capacity-building for newcomers. The conference also encouraged practical follow-ups, such as new regional collaborations, a Latin American group creating Wikidata and Wikipedia content about librarians, and increased participation in the Libraries User Group.

Advance our model

We continued advocating for Wikipedia as a public good. Earlier this year, Wikipedia was formally recognized as a Digital Public Good, a UN-endorsed initiative that supports open technologies advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. This recognition affirms Wikipedia’s unique role in providing free, open, and trusted knowledge for the public good, and underscores how our model continues to shape global access to information in the public interest.

The Global Advocacy team built relationships with new supporters at global events, including the World Economic Forum, SXSW, UNESCO World Press Freedom Day, the first UN Wikipedia edit-a-thon, and the Internet Governance Forum. The Foundation also joined the TAROCH Coalition, a Creative Commons campaign urging UNESCO to expand open access to cultural heritage.

Recently, we released The Wikipedia Test, a simple tool designed to help policymakers consider how new internet rules might impact sites like Wikipedia and other public-interest platforms. It asks questions about topics like privacy, free expression, and access to knowledge, so laws meant for big tech don’t accidentally harm communities that share information for the public good.

Protect our projects and our people

In the second half of this fiscal year, our work has focused on adapting to shifting legal frameworks and defending against strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) targeting Wikipedia. These lawsuits are used by powerful individuals or entities who disagree with what is published about them, even if the information is supported by reliable sources.

From January to June, our legal work stretched across regions as we celebrated important legal victories. In India, where the Supreme Court overturned a Delhi High Court order requiring the removal of an English Wikipedia article, and in Germany, where a ruling set a precedent protecting Wikimedia projects and volunteers from “forum shopping.” We also filed amicus briefs in Netchoice v. Brown and Patterson v. Meta to defend free speech and the open internet.

Recently, we filed a legal challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act, which presents the risk of wrongly classifying Wikipedia as a “Category 1” platform. If that happened, it could expose us to burdensome oversight and moderation demands and create human rights risks to Wikipedia’s users that would threaten our model and waste our resources. On August 11th, the High Court dismissed our challenge but importantly underscored the value of Wikipedia to society and urged Ofcom and the UK government to be responsible for guaranteeing that Wikipedia is protected as the law is implemented.

In Portugal, we continued our defense in the César do Paço case, which we see as a strategic lawsuit against public participation. After exhausting all possible appeals in the country, we were required to comply with a court order to remove content and provide a small amount of users’ data, even though we had at the same time taken the case to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the ruling violated the rights of Wikipedia users.

Protecting contributors’ privacy continued to be a top priority. We have expanded to most of the large Wikipedias a feature called Temporary Accounts, which replace visible IP addresses with temporary account names for logged-out contributors. The full rollout on all other wikis is nearing completion –  giving contributors more privacy while still supporting moderation tools.

Effectiveness

Our Effectiveness goal emphasizes how the Foundation, as an organization, can continue to adapt and improve its processes for maximum impact.

Financial sustainability

In the past two quarters, Wikimedia Enterprise, the Foundation’s API service that makes Wikimedia content accessible for commercial uses, reached a major milestone: its first year of profitability. Within just four years of launch, the project has not only repaid its initial investment but is now a contributor to the financial stability of the Wikimedia movement, representing 4% of the Foundation’s total revenue. 

Continuing our commitment to financial transparency, we have gone beyond sharing our financial information by contextualizing and explaining to help our audiences better understand our work. Earlier this year, we shared takeaways from the Wikimedia Foundation’s Form 990 for fiscal year 2023–2024, and also published the Annual Reports for both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Endowment, highlighting the global impact made possible by volunteers, staff, and donors working together over the past year.