Wikimedia CEE Spring/Guide for local coordinators

Wikimedia CEE Spring is an international editing contest that traditionally is held from 21 March to 31 May every year in almost every country and/or community in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region.

Every country and/or community participating in the CEE Spring needs to publish a separate project page on their Wikipedia, where they inform participants about the contest duration, which can be shorter than the international period.

Who can be a local coordinator?

Local coordinators are not selected by the International Team of the CEE Spring, but come from local communities of their Wikipedia and/or from their local affiliates (organizations). Therefore, a local coordinator can be any interested person from the respective Wikipedia, who can organize the local editing contest. There are no official rules with eligibility criteria that local coordinators should fulfill, but the process is run by communities/affiliates.

Tasks for a local coordinator

Prior to the editing contest

Prior to the editing contest, local coordinators have to prepare the following:

• sign-up as official local coordinator on Meta page dedicated to CEE Spring; Add yourself
• create separate project pages about CEE Spring as an international editing contest and their separate editing contest (if they have it) on their home Wikipedia; Link the local page to Q137867811. You can use this template for local page from 2016 if you wish.
  • for statistics purposes, create a local category for the contest and link it to Q138035924.
• discuss the rules of the contest with their community;
• define a list of around 100 articles about their country, region, or language, which can be distributed in ten possible categories (provided by the International team). Article lists can be provided directly from the local coordinator or through the discussion page on the respective home wikis with the help of the respective communities;
  • Recommendations
    • Pick topics that have articles in English which at least have a certain length, in order to make translations easier
    • Remove articles that have been written in many languages and replace them with interesting topics that haven't been written about (good indicators are Ukrainian or Russian)
  • put the lists on Template:Wikimedia CEE Spring 2026 Article Lists by Country.
    • Important: The Lua-Module currently cannot handle more than 500 entries on one page, so please keep your list below that number of articles.
  • if the local coordinator organizes the contest several times, review if articles from previous years are available in the participating languages. If yes, remove those articles from the lists and add new topics from your community.
• create all needed templates and categories for better statistics on the editing contest on the national and international level;
• organize a jury from other volunteers in the movement, who will not take part in the contest;
• inform the community and active editors about the upcoming editing contest on their Wikipedia; and
• announce prizes (if applicable) along with the editing contest on their Wikipedia.

During the editing contest

During the editing contest, local coordinators need to:

• make sure that all participating articles on their own wiki have the needed template with parameters for username, topic and country (Template:CEE Spring 2026), which is required for proper statistics; and
• promote the contest and provide additional information through sitenotice, social media, blogs, or other channels.

After the editing contest

After the editing contest, local coordinators have to:

• review all submitted articles to ensure they have the necessary information (as templates) for proper statistics on national and international levels;
• contact the jury members to start submitting points for the articles;
• announce and notify the winners after receiving the points from the jury members; and
• give the prizes to the winners of the contest.

Note on prizes

• CEE community participants are allocated up to €400 for local prizes, while guest/community participants receive up to €100.
• After the contest results are finalized, local coordinators should contact the fiscal sponsor to request the funds. They need to submit a form with the names of the winners and the prize amounts.