Wikimania 2026: Impactful sessions, useful tools, and wonderful people

I’m a volunteer with the Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand (WANZ) community, where I contribute to Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. I’m also in the GLAM sector, as Curator Botany at Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand. I attended Wikimania 2026 on an ESEAP Hub travel scholarship, and this blog is a summary of my Wikimania experience.

Difficult choices and impactful sessions

Wikimania 2026 was held in Paris, France from 21-25 July 2026. The theme for the conference was, “Freedom, Equity, Reliability (Liberté, Équité, Fiabilité). Together, let’s protect knowledge, equity and freedom.” About 1,200 people from over 100 countries attended in person. Sometimes there were as many as ten different and equally interesting parallel sessions, which made it difficult to choose which ones to attend. However, the sessions I chose to attend were articulate, well-prepared and worthwhile, and for I can watch those I missed on YouTube.

Respecting indigenous knowledge in open spaces

The sessions that had the biggest impact on me were those dealing with indigenous knowledge, artificial intelligence, and useful tools. For example, the launch of CultureStrong by Wikimedia Australia was a very informative and inspirational collaboration, and their guide and white paper are very relevant for us in New Zealand and the broader ESEAP region for collaborations with indigenous people on open knowledge.

Second, it was incredibly moving to hear the four indigenous women from Australia, Canada, Chile and New Zealand introducing themselves in their own language on the keynote panel on Respecting Indigenous Knowledge in Open Spaces. Listening to how and why they contribute indigenous knowledge to Wiki platforms was impressive and meaningful. This keynote panel was for me the best session I attended at Wikimania 2026, and surely a sign of more to come in future Wiki conferences. 

Artificial Intelligence and the Wiki movement

There were numerous sessions about Artificial Intelligence, and three I will highlight here include two panels and a talk. It was empowering and also a bit sobering to get updated on the “big picture” current status of the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (especially large language models) and the Wikimedia movement in two panel sessions: If AI becomes the first web interface, how can the Wikimedia movement adapt? and State of Wikimedia & AI 2026: Freedom, Equity, Reliability at a Crossroad. 

As someone who chooses not use generative AI in their day to day life or Wiki work, these sessions were nevertheless very informative to understand larger trends affecting the movement, which all of us need to be aware of. Two current trends were noted and discussed: on the one hand, there is a massive uptick in AI use online, and on the other, there is a large drop in Wiki traffic and editors. The panel members’ interpretations of these trends were varied and insightful, but most viewed them as an opportunity to reinterpret our movement’s mission and values in light of the way the world is now. By contrast, a talk at the pre-conference WikiWomen+ summit by User:Schiste, which was based on his personal essay on Meta entitled, “Wikipedia at 25: A Wake-up Call”, was like a doomsday clock striking a sombre note, ticking toward the possible end of the movement. 

Of all the AI-related presenters I heard, I thought Alec Tarkowski of Open Future Foundation was particularly articulate and forward-looking about this topic. His main takeaway message was that our movement is made up of a wonderful, democratic, innovative, and DIVERSE community; these are our biggest strengths, and they will help us take bold and fast action in this area to carry on together.

Useful editing tools

Several sessions provided practical, hands-on demos or training which have given me new tools, tips and tricks that I can add into my editing workflow. I will highlight two here.

First, I attended Adding and Managing Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons, where Piotr Gacowski (User:PMG) led us on a fun, fast-paced, whirlwind tour of all the tools he uses to quickly add structured data to Commons. These tools have helped him reach several personal milestones including now 10 million edits on Commons, so he clearly knows what he is talking about. 

Specifically, he focused on the Depictor tool for adding structured data statements and categories to Commons, the Wikicrowd tool for adding “depicts statements” as well as “prominent” to multiple images in a category, and Commons gadgets that you can add to your common.js page for putting categories on multiple images simultaneously. Finally, he demonstrated the PetScan tool for finding categories without images, which has a drag and drop capacity.

Later, I attended Editing Wikidata with Paulina to improve information on cultural heritage, where Jorge Gemetto showcased the tool Paulina (named after Paulina Luisi). Paulina can be used to query Wikidata about people and their works, and whether they are in the public domain. During the session, attendees used several pre-prepared Wikidata queries to find information as well as edit Wikidata using the Paulina tool, which is very user-friendly and is being actively and regularly improved.

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata

But Wikimania is not just about themes and tools. It is actually about people, and the connections we make and maintain with others in the movement. 

There is a beautiful whakataukī (proverb) in te reo Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand: 

He aha te mea nui o te ao. He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. 

What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.

I made and reinforced connections with others by attending the informal biodiversity, Latin American, and climate change meetups. Since I speak Spanish and am very interested in biodiversity and climate change, it was wonderful to meet up with like-minded people and make new connections – especially thinking about Wikimania 2027 which will be in Santiago de Chile next year! 

I also had some wonderful interactions with specific Wikimedian colleagues which I look forward to continuing to develop over the next year. For example, in the same Lightning talks II session where Siobhan Leachman (User:Ambrosia10) presented our wiki outreach with the botanical community entitled Botanists in the Universe, the previous lightning talk was also about botany! Siobhan and I talked to presenter Douglas Scott afterwards about collaborating on wiki botanical outreach for the XXI International Botanical Congress in South Africa in 2029, and we are now in contact via email to further this collaboration. 

I also enjoyed meeting Peruvian Guillermo Carlos Gómez from WikiÁrboles when I saw his wonderful poster during the poster session. Now that we are connected online, we can to stay in touch and perhaps collaborate in future. Finally, I also met with UK Wikimedian Lucy Moore during one of the breaks. We had been texting one another on Telegram before the conference about a potential collaborative Wikidata project and it was great to meet in person to flesh out some of our ideas, and set up some actions to get this project started later this year.

Final thoughts

This was my third in-person Wikimania (I also attended Singapore in 2023 and Katowice in 2024), and attending this year in Paris as in previous years was rewarding, motivating, eye-opening, fun and inspiring. Even though there were over a thousand attendees, the conference did not feel overwhelming or impersonal. On the contrary, many sessions were small to medium sized and the opportunities to connect with others on a personal level were many. I returned to New Zealand with many new ideas and renewed excitement about current and future projects, some with current collaborators and some with new contacts made at Wikimania 2026.  

If I could change anything, it would be for scholarship funders to consider allowing earlier arrivals for those of us travelling from very far away (e.g. New Zealand to Europe, which took 40 hours of travel, door to door!) to rest and acclimatise prior to attending any conference sessions.

I am very grateful and humbled that ESEAP Hub granted me a travel scholarship to attend Wikimania 2026 in Paris.