This article was originally published by Wikimedia Foundation on July 22, 2026 on Diff and licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0. Links, images, and captions added by User:Wil540_art

This year we celebrate 25 years of Wikipedia. It is not only a celebration of knowledge, but of the humans, who made it possible. Passionate fact collectors, conscientious citation checkers, enthusiastic organizers, patient patrollers, engaged article writers – it takes all of them, and more, to make the wonder happen.

So this year, once again, we celebrate the people behind the projects. The beloved Wikimedian of The Year awards shine the light on exceptional individuals, and through them, on the whole Wikimedia community. Presented by the Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, the awards honor Wikimedians in the Laureate category for longtime editors and pillars of our movement, the newly created Community Connector category for those who link people, roles, and corners of the wikiverse, and the central Wikimedian of the Year category, alongside the Honorary Mentions.

As we celebrate those individuals, we salute everyone around the world, who day after day comes to our projects to add a citation, share a fact, fix a typo, create an article, revert vandalism, build a script, or organize a campaign. This wonder is yours.

Without further ado, we present the 2026 Wikimedian of the Year winners:

This year, as Wikimania comes to Paris, we celebrate one of the trusted editors who keep French Wikipedia reliable. Jules* is the 2026 Wikimedian of the Year, a longtime editor entrusted by his peers to keep the encyclopedia reliable, and someone who has made a lasting mark on its integrity.

He began his Wikipedia journey in 2010 with editing articles about his hometown and a beloved TV series. Those first, “clumsy” edits, as he called them, received a warm welcome from other editors, so he decided to stay. Now, he has almost 400,000 edits to date.

Almost exactly a year to the day after he started editing, the community entrusted him with additional rights—the extra tools that let experienced editors help maintain Wikipedia’s quality and security. Jules* became deeply involved in project maintenance because he cares a lot about Wikipedia’s dedication to reliable, neutral and verifiable knowledge. Much of his time goes to reverting vandalisms, improving new contributions, helping newcomers, fighting undisclosed paid editing, and responding to community requests for help.

As an author, Jules* focuses on the topic of climate change. He approaches each article in true Wikimedian fashion—gathering good quality sources and verifying facts. A single article can take him several months to write. He is especially proud of his articles about the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report or the Charney Report.

What gives him joy, he says, is “being part of something bigger than me, or than us, in fact trying to give access to knowledge to everyone, which is somehow a tool for human peace and welfare.”

But life is not all Wikipedia. Jules also loves hiking, and is interested in trains—he even used to drive one!

Congratulations, Jules and thank you for all that you are doing!

When Mari Avetisyan started editing in 2018, she was not sure if she would belong. Instead she found friends, a community, and a deep sense of belonging. Today she is one of the people building that same belonging for a new generation of young Wikipedia editors across Central and Eastern Europe, and one of our Honorary Mentions this year.

It started in 2018, when Mari, a university student at the time, joined a Youth WikiCamp in Armenia. She came to learn more about how Wikipedia works and how to make sure reliable knowledge is accessible not only in English, but in her own language too.

Mari, a shy introvert, was not sure how well she would fit in the WikiCamp group: “I thought that I would not integrate into the group and I would feel lonely”, she recalls. Instead, somewhere between editing workshops, board games and cultural events, she found friends, with whom she is still in touch years later, and a community that became her home. “Joining the Armenian Wikimedia community was the first time in my life that I truly felt a sense of belonging to something”, she says.

Today, Mari is the one creating that sense of belonging for others. She has been a core part of CEE Youth group, a group working on capacity building, peer learning, and leadership development among young Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe. As a member of the group, Mari played a key role in organising the CEE Youth meeting last year. Now she is developing a learning exchange program, where she will be mentoring the Slovenian community.

What gives her joy is watching young people join: “These are the next generation of leaders, trainers, and organizers of our movement, with whom I share my experiences and act as a guide, so that they never feel lonely or lost”.

Seeing Wikimedia grow in Armenia is what makes her proud, and she hopes others can learn from her community: “I believe that increasing the visibility of smaller communities helps create more opportunities for collaboration, learning, and growth”, she says.

When she is not editing Wikipedia, Wikidata or Wikimedia Commons, you can find Mari reading books in different languages, hiking across Armenia, making pottery, playing badminton or (in true Wikimedia fashion) learning about the roots of different words.

Wikipedia is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and with it, we are celebrating the people and communities who made its impact truly global and multilingual. Our Honorary Mention this year goes to Hijiri Umemoto, one of the very first editors of Japanese Wikipedia. In celebrating him, we also celebrate the Japanese Wikipedia community and its path over these 25 years, one that has made it the second most-read Wikipedia in the world.

Hijiri was one of the first registered users on Japanese Wikipedia—his user ID number is 5. He started editing soon after the software allowed the use of Japanese characters (initially it used only Romanized Japanese). He soon became the caretaker of the project’s mainspace and a creator of its early short articles, the so-called stubs. He thinks he might even be the first user to write a wiki article in the Japanese alphabet. And while he does not have many edits, he may be the earliest editor still active today.

Like the Wikipedia pioneers who launched projects in German, Catalan, Arabic, Chinese, French, and Esperanto in early 2001, he could not have imagined he was helping build what would become the largest source of knowledge in the world and the backbone of the internet.

He was able to observe the growth of his community, and new generations starting to contribute: “The fact that the project had outgrown its launch members and was now running entirely on its own momentum is something I am deeply proud of,” he reflects. “It means that the project has become larger and more important than any individual,” he adds.

He cares deeply about Wikipedia being a welcoming place for those who want to join: “We should never forget that new contributors are among Wikipedia’s most valuable resources. They are the people who will shape its future, and they deserve patience, encouragement, and respect,” he says, encouraging experienced editors to be kind to those who are starting out, and newcomers to be bold and not afraid to make mistakes. “Wikipedia has always been built by ordinary people learning from one another. I hope we never lose that spirit,” Hijiri adds.

While you can definitely spot Hijiri on a wiki, you can also find him on the radio waves. Amateur radio is his passion, and he holds ham radio licenses in four different countries! “I hope to catch some of you on the air!” he says to his fellow Wikimedians.

Wikipedia turns 25 this year, and so we knew we had to celebrate someone who has been here almost from the very beginning. Dreamyshade started editing the same year Wikipedia itself came to life, in 2001, and she has been a dedicated editor ever since.

Like many Wikipedians, her story began with a realization that something was missing, and that she might be able to fix it. A young and aspiring harpist, she went looking for an article about the harp, and when she couldn’t find one, she wrote it herself. Her other early articles included a browser game and entries on boy bands. That other editors took her work seriously, rather than dismissing it due to her age, was really meaningful for her.

At first, Wikipedia was a fun and productive way to procrastinate doing homework. Then it became an important part of Dreamyshade’s life. Today she has more than 13,500 edits on English Wikipedia alone, and has mentored many new Wikimedians at events in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work is all about quality: she likes to take an article in poor shape, fix it, and move on to the next. She cares especially about verifiability and has a talent for catching fake citations: references to sites that present themselves as reliable but aren’t.

Despite editing almost every single month for the last 25 years, she is still not done: “I really feel like my best work is ahead of me”, she says.

For Dreamyshade, Wikipedia is a great source of joy and meaning. “With every contribution, I help prove the value of this deeply human, collaborative, altruistic, global, nonprofit project. I help other curious people learn things! I get to be part of something that is flexible, meaningful, fascinating, and challenging”, she says.

Her advice is very simple: contribute long-term, try different ways of contributing, and if needed—take breaks and come back. She also encourages a sense of belonging: “try spending time with other people in the movement, ideally in person, and you’ll probably get inspired to contribute in a new direction”, she adds.

Thank you so much for your work Dreamyshade. Here’s to the next 25 years of contributing!

Barkeep49 is our Wikimedia Laureate 2026. He is a seasoned contributor to English Wikipedia, trusted by the community with multiple extended rights, and someone who has left an indelible mark on the safety of our movement. He dedicates his time to working on processes that ensure that Wikipedia is a place where everyone can feel safe, and encourages others to take on advanced roles in the projects. On top of all that, he has made more than 40,000 contributions, enriching Wikipedia with good articles and featured lists.

Barkeep49’s work embodies what Wikipedia is all about: free and reliable content, and a supportive project community.

We might not be having this celebration if it weren’t for an artist with a self-promotion agenda. It was 2018, and Barkeep49 was reading the Wikipedia biography of a comedian whose show he had just watched. He spotted some promotional content, decided to remove it, and in doing so reactivated an account that had sat dormant since 2005. Wikipedia’s mission of bringing high-quality information to everyone aligned with his values, but what made him stay was the community: “I both got help from experienced editors but just (perhaps more) importantly from a group of peers who were all trying to find our way in the project.”, he reflects. And while he expanded his wiki work to so many areas, the social thread has never broken:

“I get great joy in interacting with my fellow Wikimedians, who I regularly learn from, am challenged by, and who I have the great privilege of collaborating with in so many different ways and places“, he says.

Barkeep49 has served the community in many roles: an English Wikipedia admin, member of the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (the project’s dispute resolution body) and a supporter of the adoption of the Universal Code of Conduct, the movement-wide standard for respectful collaboration.

But first and foremost, Barkeep49 sees himself as a content editor. His special love is US children’s literature, and one of his favorite pieces of work is the article about Black and White—a book he adored as a child and to which he came back as a Wikipedia editor. “It was so fun coming back to it as an adult and diving into not only the academic literature, but in figuring out how to write about what is considered a pioneering postmodern picture book, without violating [Wikipedia’s] core tenets like no original research.”

But life is not all Wikipedia. When not editing, Barkeep49 enjoys reading, watching movies, and baking. “If people ask nicely I might share my fantastic banana bread recipe and the recipe I made from scratch for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies”, he says.

The newly created Community Connector award goes to someone who brings people together and makes our communities stronger, and its first-ever recipient is Chlod Alejandro, a young student from the Philippines. He is also the first Filipino to be honored in the history of the Wikimedian of the Year awards.

Chlod’s impact on our movement can be seen in many forms: he is an engaged English Wikipedia editor, a prolific tech contributor, valued for many tools and scripts, supporting the work of others, and a passionate organizer in the East, Southeast Asia, & Pacific region, where is helping to bring together the next generation of Wikimedians.

Chlod’s work connects people, connects different corners of the wikiworld, and most of all, connects serious movement organizing work, with a pure joy of being a Wikimedian.

English Wikipedia is a project that Chlod calls home: this is where his editing journey started, and this is where he edits most frequently. If you go down a video-game related rabbit hole on Wikipedia, chances are that you will stumble across Chlod’s articles!

With software programming being one of his hobbies, Chlod is also deeply involved in the Wikimedia technical community. He has created many tools and scripts that help Wikimedians in their maintenance work, and, as a tribute to those who mentored him in early days, he has trained others too. And all of that is added to his work with his beloved community in the ESEAP region, where he has taken on an organizer’s role, helping to organize projects and events and to celebrate Wikipedia’s birthday. Most recently, he has been one of the drivers behind organizing a community of young Wikimedians, the future generation of our movement. He is also a passionate singer from a musical family, known for his performances at one of the Wikimedia community’s most beloved social traditions: karaoke!

No wonder Chlod has trouble choosing one area that matters to him the most: “As someone who works on articles, develops tools, and interacts with communities, it’s hard to prioritize one over the other because all of these are what makes the gears of this movement work together”, he says. “If anything, I think my main contribution is just being myself and finding a place to excel. We all have our own strengths, and I think it’s up to us to make the most out of them for the benefit of the Wikimedia movement.”

What is constant across these areas is Chlod’s dedication to the Wikimedia mission: “Wikipedia, and the Wikimedia movement at large, is a testament to human determination, perseverance, and spirit; to what we humans can do when we work together. It’s one of the many manifestations of the indomitable human spirit against the indifferent universe. And it’s very moving seeing us all work together on ‘the sum of all human knowledge’ as our goal. It’s our gift to all mankind: the mankind of now and the generations to come. And I don’t mean to toot my own horn saying this, but that’s probably the best gift we can ever give to the rest of humanity”, he reflects.

Thank you to everyone who makes Wikimedia possible and especially to this year’s Wikimedia of the Year recipients. Please join us in celebrating them now and throughout the year.