Wikipedia celebrates 25 years of knowledge at its best

New video docuseries celebrates the humans who make knowledge on Wikipedia possible

An Indian doctor based in Sweden is one of eight Wikimedians featured in the global video series

By: The Wikimedia Foundation

15 January 2026: Wikipedia, the world’s largest online information resource, turns 25 today,

marking a quarter century of making trustworthy, human-powered knowledge accessible worldwide. Through a Wikipedia 25 campaign launched today, the Wikimedia Foundation — the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia — invites everyone to discover Wikipedia’s journey over the last 25 years, celebrate the volunteers who make the site possible, and be part of the platform’s future.

“Wikipedia is a digital wonder of the world, unlike anything else. It has overcome countless challenges and changes in its time, thanks to the people behind it and their unwavering commitment to sharing free, reliable knowledge with the world,” said Maryana Iskander, Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. “With billions of monthly visits and an ever-growing number of organizations relying on Wikipedia’s free, verified knowledge, this platform has become integral to the architecture of the entire internet.”

Indian Wikimedian featured in global birthday campaign

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation released for the first time a video “docuseries,” sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the lives and stories of Wikipedia volunteer editors around the world. All of the knowledge on Wikipedia is created and maintained by a global community of nearly 250,000 volunteer editors who write, edit, and fact-check information according to rigorous standards on neutrality and reliability.

The series stars eight of these volunteers and spotlights their unique purpose and passions for contributing to the online encyclopedia. They include a Californian who has spent two decades documenting hurricanes and storms, an Indian medical doctor who shared critical COVID-19 information during the global pandemic, an elderly librarian in Tokyo making knowledge available in Japanese, and more. Their stories underscore that, even and especially in the age of AI, knowledge is human, and knowledge needs humans.

The featured Indian medical doctor, Dr Netha Hussain, played a critical role in sharing accurate COVID-19 medical information during the global pandemic. The inclusion underscores India’s growing influence in the global Wikimedia movement of volunteers and the impact of Indian knowledge professionals beyond national borders.

India contributes the fifth-highest number of views to Wikipedia in the world, with about 800 million page views per month. In terms of content contributions, India has the third-largest number of contributors to English Wikipedia after the US and the UK. Wikipedia is a vital resource for people who are looking for educational content in their local language. Wikipedia is available in more than 25 Indic languages. This includes nearly all of the 22 scheduled languages of India, which is the largest number of languages represented from one country on the online encyclopedia.

The Foundation also launched today a “25 Years of Wikipedia” time capsule, allowing Wikipedia fans worldwide to delve into the past, present, and future of this treasured global resource. Users can listen to Founder Jimmy Wales share in his own words memories from Wikipedia’s origin story, including when he himself installed the site’s very first servers. The capsule also explores Wikipedia’s role during major global events, such as when Wikipedia’s servers almost

collapsed in 2009 from site visits following Michael Jackson’s death. It showcases some of the most weird and wonderful parts of Wikipedia, like an article on a prescient octopus named Paul.

25 years of Wikipedia: Campaign highlights (An Overview)

In addition to the docuseries, and the time capsule,  the Wikimedia Foundation has launched several initiatives as part of the anniversary campaign:

• An interactive quiz inviting users to explore different visions for Wikipedia’s future, co-created by editors, children, futurists, and artists.

• A global invitation for users to use a new feature  “sign”  Wikipedia’s digital birthday card, aiming to make it the longest birthday card ever.

• A global, virtual birthday event on 15 January at 4:00 pm UTC, featuring surprise guests, games, entertainment, and more. The event will be livestreamed on Wikipedia’s YouTube, TikTok and Instagram channels. Other in-person events are planned worldwide.

• Baby Globe, a new birthday mascot inspired by a Wikipedia volunteer’s sketches, can be found in a series of playful, visual surprises on several language versions of Wikipedia when readers turn on ‘Birthday mode’ next month.

• A fresh, festive limited-edition collection of Wikipedia merchandise, starting with a Baby Globe plushie developed in collaboration with Makeship.

Wikipedia in the age of AI

Wikipedia has become the backbone of knowledge on the internet. For 25 years, Wikipedia and its global volunteer community have navigated technology disruptions, regulatory changes, and growing mistrust across the information landscape, among other shifts. Through it all, they have — and will continue to — adapt and evolve to ensure everyone, everywhere can continue to access and share knowledge.

In the AI era, Wikipedia and its human-created and curated knowledge has never been more valuable. Today, Wikipedia is among the top-ten most-visited global websites, and it is the only one to be run by a nonprofit. Its 65 million articles in over 300 languages are viewed nearly 15 billion times every month, and its knowledge power generative AI chatbots, search engines, voice assistants and more. Wikipedia is one of the highest-quality datasets used in training Large Language Models.

Wikipedia’s progress over the last 25 years highlights its increasing relevance to the online world today. These are a few of the ways it has grown and evolved over the years:

• New partnerships with tech companies support Wikipedia’s sustainability: Tech companies that rely on Wikipedia content must use it responsibly and help sustain Wikipedia for the future. One key way to do this is through the Wikimedia Enterprise platform. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise is a commercial product for large-scale reusers and distributors of content from Wikimedia projects. Over the past year, several companies — including Ecosia, Microsoft, Mistral AI, Perplexity, Pleias, and ProRata — became new Wikimedia Enterprise partners, joining existing partners such as Amazon, Google, and Meta. They can access content from Wikimedia projects at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs, while directly supporting our nonprofit mission.

• Implementing an AI strategy that puts humans first: The Foundation’s recent AI strategy directs future investments and developments in AI to support the human contributors at the core of Wikipedia, so that they can spend their valuable time on what they want to accomplish and not on how to technically achieve it.

• Strengthening our tech infrastructure: Continuous improvements have been made to Wikipedia’s tech infrastructure since 2001 to make it one of the most accessible and multilingual sites in the world. Updates to Wikipedia’s desktop interface and dark mode have greatly improved user accessibility; we’ve opened new data centers to quicken load times; and Wikipedia apps for iOS and Android allow Wikipedia fans to access content right from their mobile devices.

• Closing knowledge gaps: Knowledge on Wikipedia today has grown to be more representative and reflective of the world through dedicated efforts in language translation and community-led initiatives to increase the spectrum of volunteer editors and content on the site. Further, Abstract Wikipedia aims to make the reliable information on Wikipedia available in all languages; the project was one of five finalists of MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change grant competition last year.

• Engaging the next generation of readers and contributors: Through new experiments such as online games and short content for social media, we are discovering innovative ways that Wikipedia can reach new users, respond to global trends, and meet the evolving needs of users in a changing internet landscape.

“In 2001, Wikipedia started as a dream to share knowledge with everyone, everywhere. No one, including me, knew if it would succeed,” said Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder and Wikimedia Foundation Trustee. “Against all odds, Wikipedia has grown to become the backbone of knowledge on the internet today. Wikipedia demonstrates 25 years of humanity at its best, proving that when people come together in the spirit of building trust and collaboration, they can make the impossible possible.”

The Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s global volunteer community, and Wikimedia affiliates around the world will continue activities to celebrate 25 years of Wikipedia throughout 2026. Visit this webpage and follow Wikipedia on social media to learn more about ways to get involved.

Wikipedia – Global facts and figures

• Wikipedia is viewed nearly 15 billion times every month.

• Wikipedia contains over 65 million articles across more than 300 languages.

• Wikipedia is edited by nearly 250,000 editors every month around the world. Editors are defined by one edit or more every month; only editors with a username are counted.

• Wikipedia is accessed by over 1.5 billion unique devices every month.

• Wikipedia is edited 324 times per minute.

• Wikipedia is the only website in the top-ten most-visited global websites to be run by a nonprofit.

• On average, between January 2024 and November 2025, Wikipedia (across all 300+ languages) was viewed 798,424,226 times each month from India.
• On average, all Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, are edited by 10,520 contributors every month in India.
• In 2025 (1 Jan. – 19 Nov. 2025), these were the top-10 most-read English Wikipedia articles from people in India (with pageviews): 
  • Chhaava (7140138)
  • Kantara: Chapter 1 (6244688)
  • Coolie (2025_film) (6097299)
  • List of highest-grossing Indian films (5590816)
  • List of Hindi films of 2025 (4909955)
  • Sambhaji (4695035)
  • Pushpa 2: The Rule (3962903)
  • Sikandar (2025_film) (3887803)
  • War 2 (film) (3825198)
  • 2025 Bihar Legislative Assembly election (3705963)