Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2026/Programme

This page is devoted to the programme of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2026.

Programme Committee

Chair: Kiril Simeonovski (Wikimedia MKD)
Local Team: Gheorghe Iordachi (Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group)
Local Team: Maria-Magdalena Bărăscu (Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group)
Wojciech Pędzich (Wikimedia CEE Hub)
Nataliia Tymkiv (Wikimedia Ukraine)
Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (Wikimedia Foundation)
Anastasiya Lvova (North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group)
Mohammad Heidarzadeh (Wikimedia CEE Hub)

Development

See: Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2026/Programme development

Meetups

For self-organised and informal meetups, please see Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2026/Meetups.

Schedule

See: Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2026/Submissions

Session identifiers
Session format	- Plenary session	- Lecture (30 minutes)	- Demonstration (60 minutes)
	- Workshop (90 minutes)	- Panel (60 minutes)	- Roundtable (45 minutes)
	- Problem solver (45 minutes)	- Lightning talk (5 minutes)	- Social event
Advancement level	- Basic	- Intermediate	- Advanced
Technical support	- Online session	- Recording	- Live stream

Halls
Jean Monnet (~200 people)	Simone Veil (~130 people)	Nelson Mandela (~30 people)

Learning Day (Thursday, 17 September 2026)

For further information, please see Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2026/Learning Day.

Day 1 (Friday, 18 September 2026)


08:00 - 09:00	Registration
Hall	Jean Monnet
09:00 - 09:45	Opening session TBD, Babeș-Bolyai University Bernadette Meehan, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia
Theme	Strategy
10:00 - 10:30	State of affairs in the CEE region Barbara Klen, Karolina Gruszczyk, Mohammad Heidarzadeh, Toni Ristovski
10:30 - 11:00	Break
Hall	Jean Monnet	Simone Veil	Nelson Mandela
Theme	Strategy	Community Engagement	Education
11:00 - 12:30	AffCom meets community Mehman Ibragimov 30 minutes	Neutral Point of View policies on Wikipedias. CEE landscape. Kaarel Vaidla 90 minutes	Our Students Asked: Why Use Wikidata When We Have ChatGPT? - A Debate We Need to Have Eleni Christopoulou, Dimitrios Ringas 45 minutes
	Conversation with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska 60 minutes		Scaling What Works in CEE: Strengthening Wikimedia Education Programs Through Regional Exchange Rita Maliqi 45 minutes
12:30 - 14:00	Lunch
Theme	Community Engagement	Artificial Intelligence	Partnerships
14:00 - 15:30	Small Grants, Big Workshop: Let's share and publicize our microgrant programs Chris Schilling 90 minutes	AI for Wiki Workflows: a practical workshop for responsible use Shani Evenstein Sigalov 90 minutes	Students as contributors: The WikiDonne - Roma Tre internship programme Camelia Boban 30 minutes
			Updating the News from the “Statues” Project, Finland Heikki Kastemaa 30 minutes
			Writing contests with prizes, a way to exchange knowledge with distant countries - the Italian collaboration with Persian and Russian communities Phyrexian 30 minutes
15:30 - 16:00	Break
Theme	Sharing & Learning	Media Outreach	Community Engagement
16:00 - 17:30	12 points go to the CEE Youth Group: Launching Wiki Loves Eurovision Y. Caner Özyayıkçı, Nikos Likomitros, Nursultan Tengge 5 minutes	“There are occasional criminal threats”. What is Wikimedia’s image in the media? Kacper Szymański 30 minutes	Safe Spaces or Comfortable Illusions? Psychological Safety in Wikimedia Communities Anna Prodromou 45 minutes
	Creative Commons Monsters and Anomalies – The SCP Wiki Writing Project Jerzy Sielicki-Baryłka 5 minutes
	Building a Local Heritage Mobile App with React Native, Wikidata and Wikipedia Dimitrios Ringas, Eleni Christopoulou 5 minutes
	2026 update from Wikimedia Community Malta Enrique Tabone, Toni Sant 5 minutes
	The Wikimedia Core Curriculum and how it could be incorporated in your existing work Asaf Bartov 5 minutes	What's next for Wikipedia's social media? Liv Burke, Lucas Pasqual 60 minutes
	Documenting Turkey’s Funerary Heritage through Wikimedia Commons Adem Ünsal 5 minutes
	Empowering Local Wikimedia Research Communities: Lessons from Ukraine Mariana Senkiv 5 minutes
	Filling the Vital Articles Gap in Greek Wikipedia: A Different Writing Marathon Approach Markellos Stevis 5 minutes		The Future of the CEE Meeting: A Community Roundtable Shahen Araboghlian, Andrei Cipu 45 minutes
	Finding external funding for a Wikimedia content Nino Bogdanovski 5 minutes
	The Fediverse: Open Social Media for Open Knowledge Mārtiņš Bruņenieks 5 minutes
	How primary school students, learned to use Wikipedia Haigan Minasian, Azniv Stepanian 5 minutes
	Empowering Women through Wiki Projects: Reducing the gender gap in Uzbek Wikipedia Munojat Maqsutkhanova 5 minutes
	From local initiative to global campaign: lessons learned from Ukraine's Cultural Diplomacy Month 2026 Olesia Lukaniuk 5 minutes
17:30 - 18:00	Wrap-up
19:00 - 20:00	Dinner (all participants)

Day 2 (Saturday, 19 September 2026)


08:30 - 09:00	Walk-in
Hall	Jean Monnet	Simone Veil	Nelson Mandela
Theme	Community Engagement	Diversity	Strategy
09:00 - 10:30	From isolation to cooperation: Building stronger CEE Communities through Peer exchange Vera Pelhan, Klára Joklová, Miss Kamola 30 minutes	Introducing Wikimedia environment to new users with visual and hearing impairments: challenges and possibilities Wieńczysław D. Czerniewski 90 minutes	Grantmaking Strategy presentation and discussion Mykola Kozlenko 45 minutes
	Connecting Fragmented Heritage Daniel Antal, Tamás Mészöly, Tatiana Pudova 30 minutes		Let's be the change we want to see - movement strategy progress in the wiki way Nataliia Tymkiv 45 minutes
	Iranian Wikimedians Through War and Internet Shutdowns Mohammad Heidarzadeh 30 minutes
10:30 - 11:00	Break
Theme	Artificial Intelligence	Strategy	Diversity
11:00 - 12:30	The future of Wikipedia in the age of AI Gergő Tisza 30 minutes	CEE Hub's Annual plan for 2026 Barbara Klen, Karolina Gruszczyk, Toni Ristovski, Mohammad Heidarzadeh 90 minutes	Young Wikimedians: Progress, Challenges, and Cross-Community Perspectives Nursultan Tengge, Nikos Likomitros, Yılmaz Caner Özyayıkçı, Asmah Federico 45 minutes
11:00 - 12:30	State of the Wikis & AI: Challenges and Opportunities in the CEE region Shani Evenstein Sigalov 60 minutes		Roma Representation on Wikipedia: Knowledge Gaps, Historical Narratives, and Community Responsibility Andra Drăghiciu, Marko Adam 45 minutes
12:30 - 14:00	Lunch + Group photo
Theme	Community Health	Artificial Intelligence	Communications & Technology
14:00 - 15:30	Moved by the Movement: Mental Health, Connection and Resilience for Wikimedians Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska 90 minutes	Building a Wikimedia tool with agentic AI (programming experience required) Asaf Bartov 90 minutes	Let's talk communication: A CEE communities roundtable Karolina Gruszczyk, Magda Barascu 45 minutes
14:00 - 15:30			The CEE Technical Village Pump Mohammad Heidarzadeh, Mārtiņš Bruņenieks, Philip Kopetzky, Vera Pelhan 45 minutes
15:30 - 16:00	Break
Theme	Sharing & Learning	Governance	Technology
16:00 - 17:30	Holding community events during the war – insights from Ukraine Anton Protsiuk 5 minutes	Why (and why not) step up to the movement roles Nataliia Tymkiv, Barbara Klen 90 minutes	Three-way geodata round-tripping: Synchronising Official Registers with Wikidata and OpenStreetMap and mapping it on Wikipedia Nikola Tulechki, Iglika Ivanova 60 minutes
	Language, Community and Free Knowledge: Lessons from WikiEllinisti Markellos Stevis 5 minutes
	Leaving a trace: signatures, open archives, and women's memory on Wikip(m)edia Camelia Boban, Anna Pramstrahler 5 minutes
	Librarians on Wikipedia: Leveraging library skills for Wikipedia to foster global knowledge Iulia Irimia 5 minutes
	Neutrality Is Not Neutral: Rethinking Bias in Wikipedia’s Knowledge Model Anna Prodromou 5 minutes
	Our new way to editing days and weekends: from yearly to monthly Jovan Tasevski 5 minutes		CEE Hub TAG: Promoting tools Mohammad Heidarzadeh, Mārtiņš Bruņenieks, Philip Kopetzky, Vera Pelhan, Andrei Cipu, Gergő Tisza 30 minutes
	Five Years of Ionian Wikithon: What the Metrics Actually Tell Us About Student Retention Eleni Christopoulou, Dimitrios Ringas 5 minutes
	The power of Wiki Practice in university education Bosa Filipovikj 5 minutes
	Digital documenting cultural and natural heritage in wartime: Ukrainian experience Olesia Lukaniuk, Iryna Boiko 5 minutes
	Vibe coding in 2026: almost there Andrei Cipu 5 minutes
	Wiki Loves Film 2026 Klára Joklová, Pavel Bednařík 5 minutes
	Wiki Loves Food Arianit Dobroshi 5 minutes
	WikiLive: A Decade of Local Community Gatherings Miroslav Loci, Filip Maljković 5 minutes
	Wikipedia 25 in Turkic Communities: A Cross-Community Cooperation in Practice HakanIST, Mehman Ibragimov 5 minutes
17:30 - 18:00	Wrap-up
18:00 - 20:00	City tour
20:00 - 23:00	Dinner in a restaurant

Day 3 (Sunday, 20 September 2026)


08:30 - 09:00	Walk-in
Hall	Jean Monnet	Simone Veil	Nelson Mandela
Theme	Strategy	Capacity Development	Community Engagement
09:00 - 10:30	How we jumped from volunteer to paid and what we learned from it Matej Grochal, Ján Michael Kormaník 60 minutes	Grant proposals tips&tricks Toni Ristovski 90 minutes	Futures Lab: Rethinking Wikimedia’s role in the new knowledge ecosystem - from hypotheses to experimentation Eva Martin, Natalia Szafran Kozakowska 90 minutes
	How to raise money - simple and free ways for a small organization Grzegorz Kopaczewski 30 minutes
10:30 - 11:00	Break
Theme	Diversity & Inclusion	Strategy	Media Outreach
11:00 - 12:30	Closing the Gender Gap: CEE Women Campaign 2026 Mohammad Heidarzadeh 30 minutes	Future of the Ecosystem of Movement Organizations Kaarel Vaidla 90 minutes	Design & Communications Without a Team: Practical Survival Skills for Small Wikimedia Communities Iryna Boiko, Kamola Abduganiyeva 90 minutes
	Inclusion as Practice, Not Principle: What Wikimedia Can Learn from Organizational DEI Anna Prodromou 30 minutes
	Wiki goes rural: existing and new approaches of closing the largest gap on Commons Elena Litera, Nikolay Bulikin 30 minutes
12:30 - 14:00	Lunch
Theme	Governance	Technology	Education
14:00 - 15:00	A Decade in an Endangered Language Wiki: From Wikicamp to Steering Committee Shahen Araboghlian 30 minutes	Luthor - a tool for easily adding usage examples to Lexemes Asaf Bartov 60 minutes	WikiDonne's educational ecosystem: university partnerships, Moodle courses, and international collaboration Camelia Boban, Maria Loretta Manzato 30 minutes
	Passing the Torch: Lessons from Cluj-Napoca 2026 to Gdańsk 2027 Magda Barascu, Vlad Popovici, Gheorghe Iordachi, Claudia Serbanuta, Elena Ancu Damian 30 minutes		Wikimedia and academia - natural allies? Opening the hearts and minds of researchers with Wikimedia projects Kasia Makowska 30 minutes
15:00 - 15:30	Break
Hall	Jean Monnet
Theme	Strategy
15:30 - 16:00	What’s next for the CEE? Barbara Klen, Karolina Gruszczyk, Mohammad Heidarzadeh, Toni Ristovski
16:00 - 16:30	Closing session Jonathan Fraine, CTO of Wikimedia Germany
19:00 - 21:00	Dinner

Remote attendance

Live stream

Link to the Wikimedia CEE channel on YouTube

Session notes

Link to all session notes (etherpads)