Bulgarian Heritage in Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine, and other news from the project

Despite complicated situation due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, the 14th Ukrainian edition of Wiki Loves Monuments international photo contest ended with the highest number of submissions in the world – over 38 thousand pictures. The local contest also had a record number of special categories – 11, and for the first time Bulgarian heritage in Ukraine received a dedicated space. Bulgarian Wikimedia community is supporting the effort to document and make visible monuments of Ukrainian Bulgarian communities.

The Wiki Loves Monuments contest has been organised in Ukraine since 2012, and it is one of the biggest projects Wikimedia Ukraine is supporting. The 2025 edition was logistically especially challenging, as the Russian rockets and drones constantly attacked power grid, causing long power cuts all over the country lasting up to 18 hours at times. The contest also has a self-imposed limitation of accepting photos taken no later than August 31, 2025 to protect both national security and participants. The only exception is the interiors of monuments – their pictures can be submitted even if the pictures were taken during the competition in October. The limitation creates challenges for new users who just learnt about the contest from a banner… But it also motivates people to take and upload more interior pictures.

“The 2025 contest edition had over 38 thousand pictures submitted by 267 users. The photos depict 6795 objects from all 27 regions of Ukraine. 981 objects are pictured for the first time in the contest. We would, of course, check the pictures if there are no mistakes – some people cannot believe that this or that monuments does not have an official status, and they sometimes upload pictures to the closest monument in the lists they can find. This work usually takes us months”, highlighted Ahonc, a member of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine team, responsible for maintaining the lists. “A very detailed table with statistics in the regions is here. Our overall lists include more than 107 thousand objects, and in 14 years we have collected pictures of more than 42 thousand of them, so 39%”.

This year also saw the biggest number of special categories in the contest – 11: Interiors, Elements of Exterior, Film Photography, Kharkiv Landmarks, War Destroys Monuments, Wooden Monuments, Videos, and also Bulgarian, German, Jewish (includes Karaite heritage), and Polish Heritage.

“Special categories allow us to draw attention both of participants and of the general public to some aspects of monuments. For example, Interiors and Elements of Exterior motivate to upload less popular but more valuable views of the cultural heritage. Other special categories are about means of documenting, like Film Photography and Videos. And, of course, thematic special categories allow people to document monuments without official state protection status, and that requires creating separate contest lists, like War Destroys Monuments, Wooden Monuments, and cultural heritage of peoples of Ukraine”, commented Mykola Kozlenko, the longest serving member of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine team.

“The initial statistics (as there would be corrections made over the next few months, as the team will go over the uploaded pictures) show that Wooden Monuments was the most popular special category this year, with more than 5100 pictures uploaded. Other special categories remain on the expected level, you can check the page for more detailed statistics on each of them here: Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2025 in Ukraine/Special nominations statistics“, shared Ilya, a member of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine team responsible for bots, statistics, and running Commons:WLX Jury Tool.

“We organised the Wooden Monuments special category for the first time back in 2014 on a much smaller scale – back then we were still experimenting with special categories. We have updated the lists to prepare for this year’s edition, and now the lists include around 5200 monuments, and 607 of them – without state protection status, including quite old wooden churches from the 18th and 19th centuries. The Soviet system of recognising the monuments that Ukraine inherited, was not “fond” of designating churches as cultural heritage, so these churches are still not protected properly… Wooden structures are especially prone to fires, and the ongoing Russian attacks create even bigger risks to them, so we decided to document them while we can”, commented Xsandriel, a member of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine team responsible for maintaining contest lists.

Daryna Vozniuk, the project manager for Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine, also shared about Kharkiv Landmarks special category: “This special category is dedicated to documenting monuments in Kharkiv, the second biggest city in Ukraine, located in the northeast of the country and close to the border with Russia, so it is under constant Russian fire. We have partnered with Kharkiv Youth City Council to organise this project. Such special category raises awareness of a dire need to document city’s landmarks – or their destruction. The lists of the city include 1264 objects, and this year 25 participants uploaded almost 1900 pictures of 186 monuments”.

Atoly, a member of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine team responsible for visuals, commented: “Videos is probably our the most interesting special category, especially if you think about in the context of a photo contest… But as the main goal of the project is illustrating Wikipedia, we thought that it is useful to have it organised. This year we had 40 videos submitted, and we hope to select the best ones in the coming weeks”.

“The Bulgarian Heritage special category was organised for the first time as a pilot project, so on a smaller scale. Hopefully next year it can be a full-blown project, done in cooperation with the Bulgarian Embassy in Ukraine, some Bulgarian organisations”, mentioned MeOlya, the press secretary of Wikimedia Ukraine, and a member of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine team responsible for communication. “We are very grateful that the Bulgarian Wikimedia community was able to provide us support to pull off the project very last minute this year”.

According to Wikipedia, Bulgarians in Ukraine “make up the fifth biggest minority in the country and primarily reside in southern Ukraine”. Ukrainian Bulgarians are mostly living in Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Donetsk Oblasts, and these regions are under constant Russian military attacks or occupied, and the Ukrainian team wanted to motivate people to upload pictures of their settlements and cultural heritage via the contest.

To conduct the project, organisers prepared the list. It includes objects with an official status as a “cultural monument”, but also objects without such a status. It can include objects even if they are in ruins, repurposed or rebuilt. Participants were warned that pictures and videos of objects without such a status can take part only in the special category and cannot be awarded in main categories of the contest. This year the special award is just a pilot project – volunteers just started populating the lists (see here: Вікіпедія:Вікі любить пам’ятки/Болгарська спадщина), and prepared a landing page. The participants uploaded 339 pictures, picturing 41 objects (39 of them do not have a state recognition). The pilot contest list includes 58 objects overall, only 9 of them have official protective status, but the majority, 48 objects in the lists are not protected by the state.

For example, there is a village in Zaporizhzhia Oblast near Berdiansk – Андрово. It was established in 1862 by Bulgarians. And it is now occupied by Russia, so there is no easy access there to take pictures. The Bulgarian community there was the biggest in Berdiansk raion, and some of them were evacuated and relocated to Zaporizhzhia. But the Wikimedia Commons has only pictures related to the World War II and Soviet times (Category:Andrivka).

The participants of Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest uploaded pictures from that village – an old school, music school, old bridge, and old buildings in the village. These buildings preserve the Bulgarian spirit of the place, but they were not documented before either on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons, and they do not yet illustrate the article about the village. Occupation and active military actions might result in significant or even total destruction of the settlement, so it is very important to document and preserve what we can.

The jury for the special category will consist of Bulgarian Wikimedians: Iglika Ivanova, Nikola Kalchev, Nikola Tulechki.

“I think that being able to support this project even in this pilot stage means a lot for our Wikimedia community, and for preserving cultural heritage of Ukrainian Bulgarians.

I hope that next year we can organise a follow-up project of creating and improving articles about these villages and monuments in Bulgarian Wikipedia”, said Iglika Ivanova, lecturer at Sofia University, a jury member of Bulgarian Heritage Special Category.

The project will include searching for volunteers to translate file descriptions into Bulgarian, and organise a thematic week of creating, improving, and illustrating articles about Bulgarian settlements in Ukraine into Bulgarian.

The Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine team plans to start announcing winners of the Ukrainian edition of the contest, and also of its special categories, later in December. The hybrid awards ceremony is planned for spring 2026.