Wikimania 2026: Experiences in My First International Wiki Conference

Wikimania is an international conference that gathers wikimedians from all over the world to share their knowledge and experience in one place. On their 21st iterations, Wikimania 2026 became a special Wikimania as they also celebrated the 25th birthday of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, the start of all of this.

The data written in a blog by Wikimedia Foundation shows that this Wikimania that was held in Paris successfully gathered more than 1250 wikimedians offline and more than 2000 wikimedian online. Such an amazing number form a quite niche segment.

My First Wikimania

Wikimania 2026 was held for five days, starting from July 21, 2026, as a preconference, then continued with four main conference days. This Wikimania is my first Wikimania, which at the same time my first international wiki conference. In this conference, I got the opportunity to join the User With Extended Right (UWER) preconference, which is a conference that gathered UWER from many wiki projects. In this preconference, I got an opportunity to discuss and to absorb new knowledge, especially on the usage of tools that can help UWER on managing their projects. Besides, Moppy, the unofficial mascot for UWER, also joined us in this preconference. It looks like wikimedians love mascots in many things.

Besides the UWER preconference, I also got an invitation to join an AI preconference that talks about the use of AI and natural language in wiki projects, especially in indigenous languages, such as Betawi and Sasak. However, I do not have time to join the preconference as it was held at the same time as the UWER. Common themes also happen at the main conference days: a lot of interesting presentations are held at the exact same time, which prevents me from checking them live. Good thing most of them are recorded.

After preconference day, my first day started with a lighting talk. In this 5-minutes presentation, I share my experiences in developing projects and some suggestions to improve Wikimedia Incubator. My slides for the presentation can be found here. From that short presentation, I got the opportunity to discuss with some wikimedians on the use of Incubator and how to improve it further.

After the first day, I am free to join any presentations at Wikimania 2026. For four main conference days, I got a lot of interesting experiences from presentations to posters that were put up at special places. In this case, I met and discussed with wikimedians from Indonesia who happen to be pursuing their degrees in Europe, wikimedian from ESEAP, and from all over the world. These meetings opened my perspective on how the Wikimedia Movement, well, moved globally. Besides, I also got opportunities to discuss collaborations that can happen, regionally or globally. These collaboration potential can make local community movements become wider and are more impactful.

Everyday, the conference usually ends around 17:00 to 17:30 local time. At that time, Paris was experiencing summer, which, thankfully, was a bit cool for Indonesians. However, the sun shines until its sunset around 21:30-ish. This allows me to travel around Paris that is full of history. I managed to see and experience the Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, to the Notre-Dame; an experience that was very interesting to see all live!

Discussion and Potential Collaborations

During conference days, I got opportunities to discuss with many people informally. Some of them are with the coordinator of Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM) who invites me and Indonesian communities generally to collaborate to host WAM in our local language editions in Indonesia. Of course I agree to the opportunity without hesitation. We are currently discussing with the local community to hold it in some language editions. Hopefully by this year, more language editions in Indonesia can host the event.

Besides WAM, I also get the opportunity to discuss with one of the admins in France Wikiversity who would like to develop more Wikiversity editions in more languages. What a chance! My community in Indonesia is currently in a very early phase in developing Indonesian Wikiversity. We are currently still developing early policies and guides to be used in the projects and hopefully can share more in the near future.

Speaking of Wikiversity, I also talked with one of the editors in WikiJournal, a set of scientific journals published in English Wikiversity. In the discussion, I was informed on how WikiJournal does its publication flow from the submission, editing, and peer-review process. They also shared that currently WikiJournal is testing in publishing multilingual articles, not only English. I think, if Indonesia Wikiversity can be published, we also can publish those WikiJournal in Indonesia. Hopefully.

Last, I also get the opportunity to join the sharing session from mbok Citra in her projects in Wikilontar and Wikisami. In those lontar digitalisation, she shares how she and her team empower the local community in freeing the knowledge encrypted in the lontars. Through lontars that have already digitalised and documented, we were able to find and to absorb old knowledge and songs that are still relevant to be applied in this era.

Closing

One word that I can use to describe Wikimania 2026 is “incredible.” The experiences to discuss with volunteers that worked to free knowledge through wiki projects is not enough to be done just on-wiki, but should be done live, face-to-face. The experience to discuss and to talk with them, listening to the best practices to develop communities and projects, and the experience to see historical world cities are an incredible experience that are not enough to be written in one blog article.

The next Wikimania, which is Wikimania 2027, will be held in Santiago, Chile, which will be held in collaboration with regional chapters and user groups around Chile. Therefore, I would like to invite everyone to be more active in the Movement to free the knowledge and in collaboration locally, regionally, and globally to get the same experience as me. Let’s free the knowledge!