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Community Resources/Reports/Community Funds Distribution Report 2025-2026

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2025–2026 marked the fifth year of the Community Resources' Grants Strategy Relaunch, prioritizing the Movement Strategy goal of Knowledge Equity. During this funding year, affiliates, other mission-aligned organizations, and people around the world were awarded 427 grants from the Wikimedia Foundation Community Fund, totalling 17,735,603 USD.

In 2025-2026, the Community Fund supported its 427 grants across 90 countries. In the strategy's fifth implementation year, 56.2% of the Community Fund was distributed outside North America (NA) and Northern & Western Europe (NWE), stable compared to previous year, and up from 40% in 2020–2021.

Increase in total funding from 2024–2025
9.38%
Grantees converting from Rapid to General Support Funding
13
New Grantees
104
New multi-year General Support grants
23
Rapid Fund grants
295
Grant funds distributed outside NA and NWE
56.2%

An additional 2,195,097 USD was invested in community-led gatherings through the Conference and Events Fund, 50 grants were funded to celebrate Wikipedia’s 25th birthday (77,276 USD), 1,116,152 USD was provided for hub structure pilots, and, 255,249 USD supported research activities through the Research Fund.

Please see all awarded grants and projects on one map below (country-level data only).

Map
Map of all awarded General Support, Rapid, Conference, and Wikipedia 25 Funds in fiscal year 2025–26. Includes also active and ongoing multi-year General Support Funds, as well as India Resource Projects. Click a pin to view proposal details, and zoom in to explore proposals by region. Pins generally reflect the applicant country, though some indicate the activity or focus country. For grants with an international scope, the grantee's home country is listed. The location data is accurate to the country level only.      General Support Fund     Rapid Fund     Conference Fund     Wikipedia 25 Fund     India Resource Projects

Community Fund Grant Programs

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Community Fund grants fall under the following programs:

  • General Support Fund for flexible operational support (usually between $10,000 and $600,000 USD);
  • Rapid Fund for organizing projects (between $500 and $5,000 USD).

Of the 132 General Support grants,

  • 13 (12%) received a General Support grant for the first time.
  • 47 of the 132 GSF grants (35.6%) were approved as a multi-year grant (6 more than in the previous year),
  • 23 of the multi-year grants were awarded in their first year of multi-year funding, while 15 grants were approved for their second, and 9 for their third year of funding within their multi-year grants.
  • In the 2025–2026 funding year, 8 General Support ($224,465.36) were funded through the India Resourcing Pilot in alignment with applicable regulatory and operational requirements in India, administered by our partners the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) and the Balarc Foundation.

Of the 295 Rapid Fund grants,

  • 91 applicants were new (31%), in particular new grantees were based in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (50%), East, Southeast Asia, & Pacific (ESEAP) region (16%), and Latin America and the Caribbean (10% of new grants).
  • 21 Rapid Projects ($93,133.72) were funded through the India Resourcing Pilot.

Measures of Funding Equity

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The Regional Funds Committees made equitable funding decisions for each of the 8 funding regions. Before the new strategy (in 2020) began, 60% of funds were distributed to NA and NWE. While funding has increased for each region, regional budgets and funds distributed in NA and NWE have grown more slowly over the last five years.

It must be noted that the funding year 2025–2026 was heavily impacted by global macroeconomic upheavals, including energy import disruptions, inflation surges, and currency depreciation or volatile turbulence of local currencies against the US dollar in several funding regions. Despite this heavy impact, 56.1% of grants were still distributed outside Northern and Western Europe and North America. From these regions, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) experienced the sharpest growth in their share of the global grants budget, followed by Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The geographic diversity of Community Fund distribution held steady, with notable proportionate increases in the number of grantees located in Sub-Saharan Africa (48) and Latin America & Caribbean (9) in 2025–2026.

Additionally, the Community Resources team — in line with the Foundation’s commitment to support resourcing subsidiarity — continued their efforts to move decision-making to those closest to the work.  Such initiatives were the Nigeria National Funding Initiative, CEE Rapid Fund Program, Wiki in Africa Campaigns, and the Hacerwiki 2026 - Wikimedia Colombia.

Other Funding

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Other WMF funding activities in 2025–2026 included:

Conference and Event grants also supported convenings across the world in 2025-2026. A total of 2,195,097 USD was awarded to fund 16 events across the globe. More information on the events supported by these funds can be found here. One event was funded as part of the India Resourcing Pilot.

In funding year 2025–26, 50 grants were awarded to celebrate Wikipedia’s birthday, next to 6 Research grants and 5 thematic and regional Hub pilots.

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