Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2026-2027

Wikimedia Foundation
Annual Plan 2026–2027

The Annual Plan in a nutshell: In 2026-27 the Foundation will focus on four main Goals: Increase our reach. Diversify our traffic beyond traditional search. Respond to declining referral traffic by investing in new ways to drive direct traffic and reach future readers, editors and donors. Deepen engagement. Build a more engaged user base. This means turning casual readers into active readers who return, edit and contribute in new ways, and donate. Strengthen our reader experience (eg, personalization, reading lists / activity stats, mobile app engagement) and make editing easier and more efficient (eg, through personal dashboards, structured edits on mobile, more avenues for volunteer connection and collaboration, and support for Users with Extended Rights). Provide editors with more signals of reader demand. Protect our projects. Sustain and defend our model. Protect our volunteers and neutral point of view. Defend against the abuse of our infrastructure by bots and scraping. Lean into responsible reuse that drives value and contributors back to Wikipedia, not just traffic away. Build speed and resilience. Support the people and systems behind this work. Drive greater speed and efficiency across the Foundation. This goal includes the essential and ongoing work to keep the Wikimedia projects running.

The internet is at an inflection point. The global trends the Wikimedia Foundation and volunteers have been tracking over the past several years are no longer distant or theoretical; they are impacting Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects now. Wikipedia is seeing declines in pageviews and referral traffic from Google, and unprecedented increases in bot traffic. We believe this is not a temporary phenomenon, but a structural shift. The world needs the Wikimedia Foundation and movement to evolve and adapt.

Wikimedia's mission remains urgent. In an era of growing misinformation and unreliable AI-generated content, Wikipedia continues to provide a vital backbone of reliable knowledge across the web—the "factual netting that holds the whole digital world together." (source) But while content created by volunteers remains vital to the world, it is increasingly less visible, as people consume information from AI summaries, chatbots and other forms of third-party reuse.

This raises critical questions for the Wikimedia movement:

• Traffic: How should we respond to declining pageviews, reduced visibility and the structural shift away from search referral traffic?
• Responsible Reuse: What does sustainable reuse of Wikimedia content look like, and how do we protect our infrastructure from abuse?
• The human element: What is Wikipedia's unique value in a world of AI-generated content and "zero-click" experiences? How can we double down on the unique power of our global community?
• Protecting our model: How can we protect Wikipedia's volunteer contributor model and revenue model?
• Long-term sustainability: How will we help Wikipedia and the projects thrive for the next 25 years – and in perpetuity?

We believe Wikipedia's future depends on two things working together: thriving on wiki and beyond. That means investing in a stronger destination experience on our websites and apps that readers, contributors and donors love and come back to. And a sustainable reuse model that reaches consumers where they are, and sends value and future contributors back to Wikipedia – not just traffic away. To thrive and stay relevant in this new landscape, we need Wikipedia to thrive both on wiki and beyond wiki.

How will we do that? By focusing on four key goals in 2026-27:

1. Increase our reach: Diversify our traffic beyond traditional search. Nearly 90% of Wikipedia's visitors have historically arrived via Google search. That flow of "free" traffic is now in structural decline – a shift impacting publishers across the internet, not just Wikipedia. That means we need to grow new forms of direct traffic (e.g., new referral sources and mobile app downloads) and diversify our traffic sources so that we are less reliant on a single source. People may no longer stumble across Wikimedia content the way they used to, affecting its overall visibility and, in turn, revenue and editor motivation. This will require investing in new (and often more difficult and expensive) ways to reach future readers, editors and contributors.
2. Deepen engagement: Support our contributors and turn casual readers into repeat readers, editors and donors. Many Wikipedia users visit briefly, find a single fact, and leave. We need to make the reader experience stickier so that casual readers return, become active readers, and grow into editors and donors in larger numbers. In a world where every visit matters more, we will focus on an audience funnel (see below) that brings people from "off-wiki" content back to "on-wiki" experiences, turns casual readers into active readers, and turns active readers into participants, donors, and a new generation of community leaders.
3. Protect our projects: Sustain and defend our model. Wikipedia's volunteers and values are increasingly under threat. We will provide volunteers with the safety and legal support they need, and defend neutral point of view in a world where facts are increasingly contested and politicized. We will strengthen protection for Wikimedia infrastructure from bot abuse, and lean into responsible reuse that drives value back to Wikipedia, not just traffic away.

These goals are enabled by a fourth goal:

4. Build speed and resilience: Support the people and systems behind this work. Drive greater speed and efficiency across the Foundation's staff, systems and technical infrastructure. This goal includes the work we will do to generate the financial support necessary to meet our mission, including continuing to grow  diversified revenue streams like Wikimedia Enterprise and the Endowment to protect the future sustainability of the Wikimedia projects.

Shifts in traffic and content reuse mean that future readers, donors and contributors will come to Wikipedia differently than in the past. The Wikimedia movement's 2017 strategic direction — to serve as the "essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge" — has largely been achieved. But becoming "essential infrastructure" alone may not be enough to secure the future of free knowledge. The question now is how to play that role in ways that protect Wikipedia's contributor model, core values, and financial sustainability. As we continue to be guided by the 2030 Movement Strategy recommendations, responding to the global trends our movement now faces will require us to lean heavily on the recommendation to "evaluate, iterate, and adapt."

Our most visible and reused Wikimedia project is Wikipedia. For the coming year, we will build on Wikipedia's foundational role in the information ecosystem to drive traffic and visibility to Wikimedia content. This includes efforts to increase traffic to Wikipedia, deepening support for editors, and providing Users with Extended Rights the improved tooling and support they need in the face of growing challenges. By also investing "beyond wiki" to funnel new readers, contributors and donors back to Wikipedia, we can help ensure that Wikimedia projects remain financially sustainable, socially trusted, publicly relevant and structurally independent.

To convert casual readers into active readers, editors and donors at higher rates, we will focus on moving people through an audience funnel that uses targeted experiments, user experience improvements, and metrics at each step to turn passive consumers into active participants.

The scale of the opportunity is significant. We estimate that roughly 5 billion internet users already consume Wikipedia content of some kind, whether on our sites or through third-party reuse. Of those, 3.3 billion know Wikipedia exists. And approximately 1.5 billion — about 27% of all internet users — read Wikipedia content on wiki each month.

This gives Wikipedia a massive strategic asset in helping us navigate this moment of transition. But we have to capitalize on this strength now, while our reach and brand awareness remains strong. The traffic declines we are currently seeing mean that we need to increase the numbers near the top of the funnel – overall reuse of Wikimedia content and awareness of Wikipedia – and increase our conversion rate of readers into repeat readers, retained editors, and donors towards the bottom of the funnel. This year we will stay razor-focused on measuring our audience funnel to ensure we're experimenting and iterating in the right ways to reach these goals.

A healthy, growing editor community is vital to Wikipedia's future. To that end, we will invest in a system of personalized dashboards that help readers become editors, and support new editors on their journey towards becoming more experienced editors and moderators. These dashboards can help beginner editors grow into more advanced roles, and help highlight for more experienced volunteers what may need attention, like active discussions or potential vandalism in articles they care about. Clearer goals, impact metrics, and connections between contributors can also help deepen motivation, editor retention, and long-term participation.

We will also develop new ways for editors to see when and how readers engage with our content. This may include surfacing aggregated data on how often pages are linked to on other websites, like Google or TikTok. The goal is to allow editors to prioritize their editing based on insights into the knowledge people want most. (For example, if a common search term leads to the wrong article, editors could create redirects or expand content to better meet reader needs.)

In keeping with the recommendation from our Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC), we will continue to focus on making mobile editing easier. "Structured edits", for example, can help break mobile edits into smaller, guided tasks. For Users with Extended Rights (UWER), smarter automation (like suggested investigations into suspicious activity) can help reduce the repetitive moderation work often associated with an influx of new users, freeing UWER to focus on higher-impact tasks. We will also help protect user accounts with strengthened security.

As other Wikimedians have noted, Wikipedia and our projects are much like a living ecosystem that evolves and adapts over time. For the past two decades, Wikipedia has been sustained by a largely accidental "waterfall" of free search referral traffic from Google — a steady stream of readers, donors and contributors. Today, that waterfall is shifting course and potentially drying up. And as Wikipedia volunteers have long observed (1, 2), the community's cornerstone – its most active Admins and Users with Extended Rights – has not been replenishing at the rate needed for Wikipedia to thrive for future generations.

When living plant systems are under water stress, they typically do two things:

1. Find new water sources. Hence our emphasis on diversifying traffic, to reach beyond the traditional flow of Google search referrals.
2. Grow deeper roots. Hence our emphasis on deepening engagement – turning casual readers into repeat readers, and repeat readers into editors and donors.

If the 2026-27 annual plan had a symbol, it would be the shepherd's tree (Boscia albitrunca), a plant known for having the deepest known root structure on earth, reaching depths of up to 68 metres / 230 feet. The shepherd's tree doesn't chase shallow water.  It goes deep. And in so doing, thrives in one of the world's most unforgiving environments, the Kalahari Desert.

We believe Wikipedia is facing a similar moment of environmental stress, and needs a similar adaptation. It must grow deeper roots, turning casual readers into active readers, editors and donors who stay and deepen their involvement over time. And in doing so, renew the model that has made Wikipedia, like the shepherd's tree, a source of sustenance and inspiration in an increasingly inhospitable online landscape.

This is our draft annual plan, and we want to hear your thoughts: What has been your experience with the global trends, and how do you think it will impact Wikimedia's future? Over the next month until 31st May, we want to discuss and collect your ideas on how we can experiment, adapt, and respond together.