Wikimedia Hackathon/Community Proposal 2026
Community Consultation: Exploring the future of Wikimedia technical convenings
Summary
The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual event that brings together technical contributors from across the Wikimedia movement to connect, collaborate, learn, and work on technical projects. Since 2012[1], the Wikimedia Hackathon has been held primarily in Europe, with participants traveling from around the world to attend.
We are seeking community input on a proposed change to this model. As noted, the hackathon is currently held in the same part of the world every year. This makes it inaccessible to a lot of people, but at the same time, moving it around the world would likely increase costs, while also taking the event far away from many regular contributors who currently self-fund to attend.
One model we are considering is a cycle in which we would:
- Hold a global Wikimedia Hackathon once every three years in Europe (rationale below); and
- In the intervening years, direct funding and organizational support toward establishing regional Wikimedia Hackathons, with the goal of enabling each region to host a hackathon approximately once during each three-year cycle.
Through this consultation, we seek to gather feedback from the Wikimedia community on whether a different model for the Wikimedia Hackathon could make these events more accessible to contributors in different parts of the world, support the growth of regional technical communities, and continue to provide opportunities for collaboration across the global Wikimedia technical community.
At the heart of this consultation is a broader question: How should the Wikimedia Foundation use in-person technical events to strengthen and sustain a diverse global community of technical contributors?
Background
Over the last few years, the Wikimedia Hackathon has focused on serving experienced Wikimedia developers, those who are longstanding participants at hackathons as well as those who have never attended a hackathon before.
The Wikimedia Hackathon has been held in Europe[2] for a number of reasons:
- Where the majority of technical developers are believed to reside[3], which enables self-funding[4] for those who do not receive scholarship support.
- Where well-established Wikimedia affiliates have been located, thus ensuring that there is a local affiliate who can co-organize the event with the WMF
- A global crossroads, generally enabling the shortest number of flight legs for most participants
- Relatively open and predictable visa requirements
- Human rights protections that ensure the entire Wikimedia technical community feels welcome and safe at events
Some of these factors remain true solely for Europe, while others now apply to other regions around the world. What is increasingly clear is the growing global community interested in joining[5] or hosting technical events.
Why are we exploring a different model?
Accelerated by the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the last few years have seen significant shifts in how people discover, consume, and contribute to knowledge online. In response to these changes, the Wikimedia Foundation has focused on strengthening our contributor model and developing a new generation of volunteers and community leaders.
Why change the model now?
The 2026-27 Annual Plan calls for stronger connections across the Wikimedia movement "both globally and regionally" and identifies convenings (such as the Wikimedia Hackathon) as one way to enable Wikimedians to come together, co-create, and collaborate. This creates an opportunity to examine whether the way we currently invest in technical convenings provides the right balance between global connection and regional community-building.
The current model has created a strong and well-established annual gathering for Wikimedia technical contributors. At the same time, our understanding of where Wikimedia's technical contributor community exists today is likely influenced by where we have historically invested in community-building. Our goal is to better understand whether concentrating our resources on one global event held in the same region each year creates barriers to participation or limits our ability to develop technical contributor communities in other parts of the world.
We understand that by spreading resources out over a series of regional events, this proposal does introduce important downsides that are also worth considering. One important shortcoming is that most regional events are unlikely to have significant numbers of experienced contributors (including WMF staff) who have deep expertise across a range of Wikimedia technical areas, which could limit global knowledge sharing or impede some contributors from learning new skills.
The questions this proposal raises are: Could a different balance between global and regional hackathons help sustain our existing technical community while also creating stronger opportunities for technical communities to develop in other parts of the world? Or do the disadvantages to the overall technical community outweigh the possible benefits?
Proposed changes
A model we would like to explore is a cyclical one of holding the global Wikimedia Hackathon every three years and investing in regional hackathons during the intervening two years. This cycle could look like:
- Year 1 (2027): Global Wikimedia Hackathon
- Year 2 (2028): Regional Hackathons in (for example):
- South Asia
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Latin American and the Caribbean
- Northwest Europe
- Year 3 (2029): Regional Hackathons in (for example):
- North America
- East, Southeast Asia, and Pacific
- Middle East and North Africa
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Year 4 (2030): Global Wikimedia Hackathon
Under this model, the resources currently used to organize the annual global Hackathon would, during regional years, be used to support hackathons in different parts of the world. Ideally, each region would have an opportunity to host a regional hackathon approximately once during each three-year cycle.
Regional hackathons would not necessarily be smaller copies of the global Wikimedia Hackathon. Instead, they could provide an opportunity for organizers and participants to design events around the needs of their regional technical communities. The goal of this model would be to develop sustained engagement in each region, while ensuring that learnings from regional events feed into global events (and vice-versa).
Depending on the region, this could include:
- focusing on technical projects or challenges particularly relevant to Wikimedia communities in the region;
- strengthening relationships among technical contributors who live closer to one another;
- creating connections with universities, open-source communities, developer groups, or other potential contributors in those regions;
- developing regional mentors, organizers, and technical leaders; and,
- creating clearer pathways for people to become sustained Wikimedia technical contributors after an event.
In regions where regional hackathons are already regularly organized (India is a salient example), additional funds could be put towards supporting increased attendance, including of experienced global volunteers or WMF staff.
Possible logistics of the Regional Hackathons
The existing WMF Developer Outreach (Dev Outreach) team does not have the capacity to organize multiple regional hackathons per year. Instead, Dev Outreach would issue a call for proposals to identify local affiliates interested in hosting a regional hackathon. These proposals would be evaluated on:
- Ability to manage the logistics and administration of a regional event
- Knowledge and understanding of the technical community in this region
- Capacity to measure impact of the event, as well as the growth and retention of the technical community
The Dev Outreach team would then work closely with the selected affiliate to organize and run the hackathon. Overall, it is expected that the local affiliate would manage the logistics of the event (such as event space, accommodation, catering) but that these would meet specific quality and safety standards that would hold across all regional hackathons. The local organizer would coordinate with the DevOutreach team on participant selection, programming and impact measurement.
In addition to regional expertise, it is likely that the knowledge and skills of experienced contributors from outside the designated region would be critical. If specific skills not held at the regional level are required, experienced volunteers or WMF staff from other regions could be supported to attend a regional event.
What are we hoping to learn through this consultation?
The purpose of this consultation is to better understand whether the current balance between global and regional investment is the right one, and whether a different model could better support a strong, growing, sustainable, and globally connected Wikimedia technical contributor community.
We are especially keen to hear feedback on the following questions:
- Understanding the current model:
- What aspects of the current model would be the most important to preserve under any future models?
- How important is it for technical contributors from different regions to meet in person?
- What changes should be made to the global hackathon to ensure learnings can be shared from regional events?
- Understanding a regional model:
- What makes it difficult to onboard and retain newcomers in your region? Would a hackathon help address those issues?
- What would a regional hackathon need to offer in order to have lasting impact in your region? Should that regional hackathon run in parallel to existing regional conferences?
- How do we ensure that knowledge is shared across regional and global events?
- Ensuring the right logistics and cycle
- Is a three year cycle the right cadence? Is there a cadence that would better balance global and regional hackathons?
- We are currently using the Wikimedia definition of regions, should we be thinking about regions differently?
- How do we ensure that we have a sufficient number of experienced contributors at regional events to enable mentorship, onboarding, knowledge sharing and code review? How do we identify the specific skills and knowledge areas needed at the event?
- Measuring success
- If we tested this new model, how would we determine what success looks like[6]?
How can you share your feedback?
Please share your feedback through the Talk Page. You are welcome to respond to individual questions, comment on the proposal as a whole, suggest alternative models, or share experiences that you think should inform the discussion.
Feedback from people who have not attended a Wikimedia Hackathon is also particularly valuable. Understanding why people do not or cannot participate is an important part of evaluating the current model.
What happens after this consultation?
Consultation timeline:
- October 13, 2026: Proposal shared on MediaWiki, feedback will be collected through the Talk Page
- November 6, 2026: Feedback period will close
- December 7, 2026:
- Summary of what we heard will be shared back to the community
- A recommendation on which model to test moving forward will be proposed
Based on the feedback received during this consultation, we may elect to test a new model during the 2027-2030 time period. If a new model for the Wikimedia Hackathon appears to be favored by the community, we will then share proposed timelines for next steps and how we will evaluate if that model has been successful. These next steps will likely be shared in January 2027. Regardless of the outcome of this consultation, a global Wikimedia Hackathon will take place in Albania from April 9-11 2027, as previously announced.
No decision on changing the Wikimedia Hackathon model will be made before this consultation is completed.
Footnotes
- ↑ The 2012 Berlin Hackathon is generally considered the first “Wikimedia Hackathon”, although technical events go back at least to 2004’s 21C3 room or the Developers' Workshop 2010.
- ↑ There are only two exceptions: The hackathon was held in Jerusalem in 2015 and in Istanbul in 2025, two countries that are geographically proximate.
- ↑ The Developer Satisfaction Survey indicates that a majority of the technical community resides in Northern and Western Europe.
- ↑ In 2025, 44% of the hackathon participants were self-funded; in 2026, it was 50% of participants. At the 2026 Wikimedia Hackathon, 80% of the 112 self-funded participants were from Europe.
- ↑ Of the 234 scholarship applications received in 2026 over 80% were from applicants residing outside of Europe.
- ↑ At present, Wikimedia Hackathons have focused on experienced contributors. In addition to basic success metrics such as attendance and qualitative feedback (some examples here), success is generally measured based on the impact of the projects developed (or started) during the event. Given that this new model would focus more heavily on newcomer retention, different metrics would likely need to be adopted.