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Next 25

Next 25 is an informal ad hoc set of community members assembled in Q2'2026 to discuss the future of the Wikimedia movement. It is mainly a reaction to many discussions about Wikipedia's traffic and growth challenges, in the face of artificial intelligence and reduction in referral traffic (see Google Zero).

After the Wikimedia Futures Lab in January 2026, AI-BRIDGES symposium, extended discussions on the Wikimedia-L mailing list and ahead of Wikimania 2026, a number of community members assembled for a call on 7 July 2026, and subsequently labeled the continuing conversation as "Next 25".

Ongoing conversation is being held on Telegram, using the former SWAN Telegram channel. (Join Next25 link)

This page is to gather discussions, materials and initiatives about the current trends and the next 25 years of Wikimedia.

Context

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Some Wikimedians are concerned about current trends on readership, editorship and general knowledge distribution. There are different initiatives across the movement on that topic, but they are scattered, loosely coordinated and without clear unified direction. The Next 25 effort attempts to make those efforts more coherent and collaborative.

Actions

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Statements

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Artifacts

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Meetings

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  1. Event:This is not a meeting - First meeting on July 7th 2026

Public email threads

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In internal and external media

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Useful readings

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General strategy

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Innovation

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  • "Futures Lab in a box" may become a recurring smaller-scale event, such as in chapters or hubs

Grant making and capacity building

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Multi-generational sustainability

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Decision-making and governance

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2030 Strategy recommendations and initiatives

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Chart of 2030 strategy recommendations and initiatives, by User:Fuzheado

Parking lot

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I don't have time to structure things properly so I'm dumping here things

Capacity building ideas

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Improving WikiLearn discoverability

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- from Telegram - Four ways off the top of my of head:

  1. Referrals from on-wiki help and planning pages.
  2. Referrals from grant program officers to applicants.
  3. CentralNotice campaigns to reach editors not involved in affiliate work.
  4. Just-in-time proposals made by Mediawiki itself: imagine if, when an edit you made got reverted, the wiki notification would not just tell you it happened, but offer you links to learning modules on NPOV and Verifiability. This requires a software change of course. We have been lobbying for this in the past year, but Product has not included it in its annual plan for the fiscal year just started. I still think it would be a powerful link.

Online and offline events

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Affiliates and grantmaking

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