The Wikimedia Foundation’s Latest Transparency Report

Transparency is vital for the Wikimedia Foundation, its associated knowledge projects, and the vibrant volunteer community.

In recognition of that principle, the Foundation publishes a transparency report twice yearly. The transparency report is our opportunity to provide the broader community with an overview of the work being done at the Foundation and to share relevant information with volunteers on projects like Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons.

As many Foundation employees and project volunteers already know, work on Foundation projects prioritizes the rights of access to information, freedom of expression, and privacy, which can sometimes conflict with requests from individuals, companies, and governments. These parties may ask the Foundation to modify or even remove information from our projects, or may attempt to acquire nonpublic information. The volunteer community handles the majority of content moderation requests, and the Foundation does not intervene unless there are specific legal issues or the content does not comply with project policies and guidelines. When called on to make decisions in these matters, the Foundation prioritizes the public interest and is guided by the content moderation policies and processes that the volunteer community has shaped over the past 25 years. This model has guaranteed the quality of the information on Wikipedia. Additionally, we emphasize the community’s right to determine and discuss what content should be included on the free knowledge projects, as well as the right to contribute educational content to those projects. 

This biannual transparency report provides an overview of legal requests we have received during the reporting period. This overview includes the types of requests we have received and the country of origin for those requests. We also highlight notable requests received during the reporting period. A key distinction between Wikimedia projects and for-profit online platforms is that our content moderation is decentralized and carried out by a community of nearly 250,000 volunteers across the globe. Therefore, this report doesn’t include volunteer content moderation, precisely because it is already transparently available, for example, on each Wikipedia article’s talk page. 

Below are important statistics from the January – June 2026 reporting period: 

• Takedown requests (including content alteration): From January – June 2026, we received 953 requests to alter or remove project content. 21 of these requests were Right to Erasure-based requests related to user accounts. When we receive such a request, we provide the user with information on the community-driven vanishing process.
• Copyright requests: Wikimedia volunteer communities work diligently to ensure that copyrighted material is not uploaded to the projects without an appropriate free license or an exception, like fair use. When we receive Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices asking us to remove allegedly infringing material, we conduct thorough investigations to make sure those claims are valid. During this reporting period, we received 14 DMCA requests and granted only three. 
• Requests for user information. The Wikimedia Foundation only grants requests for user data that comply with our requests for user information procedures and guidelines (which include a provision for emergency conditions). Moreover, the Foundation collects very little nonpublic user information as part of our commitment to user privacy. Any information we do collect is retained for only a short amount of time. Of the 40 user data requests we received, four resulted in the disclosure of nonpublic user information.

You can read the full transparency report here.

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This transparency report reaffirms the Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment to the principles of transparency, privacy, and freedom of expression. It also represents the diligent work of Wikimedia volunteers, who build Wikimedia projects and the knowledge available on them. If you are interested in learning about the requests sent to the Foundation in greater depth, please access the comprehensive January to June 2026 transparency report. You can also see past reports by viewing previous blog posts.

The transparency report would not be possible without the contributions of Julianne Alberto, Aly Marino, Funkola Odeleye, Sara Campos, Laura Pulecio Duarte, Lance Greenberg, Shrutika Manivannan, Rachel Stallman, Lukas Ruthes Goncalves, Brian Choo, Jim Buatti, Noah Usman, and Jayleen Potter.