CEE Youth Group in 2025: A Year in Review

Since its foundation in 2023, the CEE Youth Group has been actively bringing together young Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia communities, providing a dedicated platform for collaboration, exchange, and peer learning across the region.

Over the past two and a half years, the group has engaged in various events, organizing its bi-monthly online and annual offline meetings, advocating about youth engagement within the Wikimedia movement, and sharing its experiences across different platforms. In 2025, the group took an important step forward by systematizing its work and publishing its first annual report – a practice that will now become a regular part of its activities

By the end of 2025, the CEE Youth Group had more than 106 unique members from 25 of the 35 countries in the Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, while ten countries had no active representation.

In 2025, the CEE Youth Group organized six bi-monthly meetings, which served as a space to reflect on recent activities, share updates from working groups, make collective decisions, and exchange local youth-related news. On average, 19 people attended each per meeting, which shows steady engagement from members across the region.

Previous year, the CEE Youth Group had two active working groups (WG):

• Internal Governance WG
• Communication WG

The Internal Governance WG drafted and finalized the CEE Youth Group’s internal governance document, establishing clearer structure, roles and responsibilities to support growth and coordination of the group. The Communications WG focused on creating engaging, youth-oriented content for the CEE Youth Group’s Instagram and TikTok channels, promoting group activities, and highlighting Wikimedia youth achievements across the region. In total, the group produced 55 posts, reels, and TikTok videos.

The CEE Youth Group members were also actively present at different regional and global Wikimedia events throughout 2025. The most important one for the group was the first-ever Wikimedia Youth Conference in Prague, Czech Republic. It brought together 83 young Wikimedians not only from the CEE&CA region, but also from all over the world. The event focused on youth engagement, leadership development, and the long-term sustainability of youth participation within the Wikimedia movement. Members of the CEE Youth Group were actively involved both as participants and contributors to the conference program.

In addition, the group members took part in the Central Asian WikiCon 2025, Wikimania 2025, and CEE Meeting 2025,where they presented the group’s work, shared experiences, and encouraged other young Wikimedians to get involved.

The year concluded with the annual CEE Youth Group Meeting which was organized in Yerevan, Armenia. A key outcome of the meeting was the agreement to focus on four priority areas for 2026, with members and ambassadors assigned to each area. The four objectives are:

1. Support for local activities of group members: Supporting local activities at the group level, collecting outputs, and identifying needs & activities for everyone. Possibility of support through CEE grants.
2. Building leadership skills: training, increasing the representation of young people in the Wikimedia movement’s structures.
3. Raising the profile of young people and their activities in the Wikimedia movement: PR & communication, presentation at the conferences.
4. Management of the CEE Youth group: organization of meetings, annual activity plans, and development strategies.

To learn more about the CEE Youth Group’s work and achievements throughout 2025, we invite you to read the full annual report.