Memory of the World challenge 2025

Memory of the World Challenge
September 1, 2025 - September 30, 2025
#MoW_Challenge

What: This is a public writing challenge related to the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register. Our goal is to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the world's most precious cultural heritage.

When: The challenge will run from 00:01 1 September until 23:59 30 September 2025 (UTC).

How: You get points for improving or creating articles related to the Memory of the World International Register. Users with the most points will be listed below. Books and other prizes are available for the highest-placed users. To receive prizes, you must be willing to privately share a postal address.

Who: Any Wikipedian with a named account (on any wiki) can participate. To participate you just need to sign up on the Participants section.

Why: The contest is organized by the Khalili Foundation with the involvement of the UNESCO Memory of the World programme and Wikimedia UK, as part of a campaign to freely share information about the world's cultural diversity. So far this project has shared a data set of the International Register on Wikidata, and updated many articles on English Wikipedia.

Relevant articles

The types of target articles, and how to use the International Register are explained more fully in the UNESCO booklet (in English).

In short, an article relevant to the Memory of the World (MoW) International Register could be:

about a MoW inscription (examples: UNRWA Photo and Film Archives of Palestinian Refugees; Saiva Manuscript in Pondicherry; Collection of Mexican Codices)
about an institution where a MoW inscription is located (examples: Museo de la Memoria de Rosario mentioning Human Rights Documentary Heritage 1976 - 1983, Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente mentioning Nise da Silveira Personal Archive; Centre of Arab and Mediterranean Music, Sidi Bou Saïd mentioning The Music holdings in Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger’s archives (1910-1932) )
about a person or event connected to a MoW inscription (examples: Komitas Vardapet mentioning Works of Komitas Vardapet; Abhinavagupta mentioning Collection of Manuscripts of his works)

How to earn points

+1 point for each label added to any of these Wikidata items in a new language.

+2 points for adding a link to an inscription in the Memory of the World International Register (en, fr, es) from a relevant Wikipedia article

+5 points for creating a new article (including translations) that mentions a Memory of the World inscription. The article should link to the relevant entry in the Memory of the World International Register (en, fr, es).

+25 points for a new list article about the Memory of the World International Register in any language. See the English Wikipedia list articles en:Memory of the World Register – Africa, en:Memory of the World Register – Arab States, en:Memory of the World Register – Asia and the Pacific, en:Memory of the World Register – Europe and North America, en:Memory of the World Register – Latin America and the Caribbean, w:en:Memory of the World Register – International Organizations. The Listeria tool can help you make list articles.

Scoring & rules

The scores are recorded automatically by the scoring bot for every participant who have signed up on the participants page with their username.

Points earned up to a month before the official start of the challenge can be claimed as part of the challenge.

The points are cumulative.

Employees of the Khalili Foundation, UNESCO, Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Finland, or AvoinGLAM are not eligible.

The organizers have the final say in the scoring of the contributions, and will clarify the rules and points if needed.

The scoring bot is created by Zache (WMFI) and can be found in https://github.com/Wikimedia-Suomi/Memory-of-the-World-challenge

Winners

The leaderboard at the end of the challenge is below. Thanks and congratulations to everyone who took part, whether they won a prize or not.

Not all the points calculated by the automated system are counted. Where a label has been copied over to another language without being translated, that does not fit our request for labels in a new language. I will be contacting all these users in private to get postal addresses where we can send the prizes. It has been a real joy to see the reaction to this challenge, and the improvements that have been made across many languages of Wikipedia and Wikidata. MartinPoulter (talk) 14:39, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Woweeee so exciting thank you so much and congratulations everyone!! I&I22 (talk) 15:37, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great!!! happy i was part of this project. Umar2z (talk) 15:57, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

About the project

UNESCO Memory of the World project