Dear colleagues and Wikimedia friends,
I’m very excited to share that the upcoming Wikimania 2026 conference in Paris (July 23-25) will feature a dedicated Research Track: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2026:Program/Research
Our vision: Wikimania 2026 coincides with the 25th birthday of the first Wikipedias. But this is also a pivotal moment for the future of free knowledge, and the web as a whole. Generative AI, rapidly shifting information ecosystems, and increasing pressures on speech, community growth, and inclusion, are reshaping how knowledge is created, verified, and used worldwide.
Our goal: the Wikimania 2026 Research Track is an interactive space where we invite researchers from around the world and across disciplines to meet the extended Wikimedia community. Together we want to identify and discuss the key structural changes or challenges that the community and its projects will have to face within the next 5–10 years.
In practice: the Wikimania 2026 Research Track is not yet another venue to present a paper. It is an interactive space designed to propose and discuss ways to protect and foster the development of free knowledge in the years to come. The track will be organized around a few invited keynote presentations – followed by lightning talks, and open conversations.
CALL FOR LIGHTNING TALK PROPOSALS:
We invite proposals for lightning talks at the Wikimania 2026 Research Track.
Within a 5 or 10 minutes format, we invite researchers to share bold thoughts, make provocative points, and/or develop tentative arguments focused on (i) identifying turning points or challenges (technical, social, legal, or regulatory), and on (ii) sketching community-oriented solutions. In this spirit, we encourage submitters to articulate powerful ideas or creative approaches in a way that can be communicated effectively to a broad audience, so as to spur debate and conversations.
Over three half‑days, each individual day will be organized around a central research question reflecting one theme of Wikimania Paris 2026:
Day 1 – Freedom / Liberté: How do we keep knowledge free by redirecting human traffic and contributions to Wikimedia projects when AI is centralizing access to knowledge?
We are seeking perspectives on social and technical strategies for protecting open knowledge from potential gatekeepers. We are also interested in ideas around the adequacy of Creative Commons licenses in the age of large-scale AI data scraping.
Day 2 – Equity / Équité: How can the community rethink the Wikimedia movement to maximize inclusiveness, increase contributor diversity, and improve newcomer retention?
We are looking for perspectives on rethinking participation models and incentives for underrepresented and marginalized groups. We are also interested in solutions around community-led metrics and methodologies for measuring impact and diversity.
Day 3 – Reliability / Fiabilité: How can we measure content NPOV / content reliability at scale (at the editor or article level, but also for the broader web)?
We are looking for contributions around the technical and social detection of disinformation or bias. We are also interested in perspectives around coordinated manipulation (or editor tracking) detection on wiki at scale.
Please consider sharing your boldest question(s), idea(s) and argument(s) at the Wikimania 2026 Research Track by submitting a Lightning Talk proposal before March 31, 2026.
Together, let us continue to defend and expand free knowledge :)
More information here: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2026:Program/Research
Looking forward to seeing you all in Paris this summer,
Sincerely,
For the organizing team:
Kinneret Gordon (WMF)
Jérôme Hergueux (CNRS)
Miriam Redi (WMF)