O Teatro Variedades, uma das salas de espectáculo mais emblemáticas de Lisboa, completa este ano 100 anos. Inaugurado em 1926, no Parque Mayer (conhecido como a Broadway lisboeta), marcou a história do teatro português.

Por ele passaram artistas que se tornaram referências do teatro português entre eles, Beatriz Costa, Vasco Santana, Marina Mota e Amália Rodrigues, e foram encenados centenas de espectáculos, desde comédias, revistas, zarzuelas, farsas, a operetas.

Após ter fechado no final da década de 90, reabriu em 2024, renovado e com o mesmo espírito eclético, onde musicais como In the Heights partilham o palco com festivais de música clássica e marionetas.

Wikiconcurso Teatro Variedades

Para dar a conhecer a sua história, foi criado o projecto 100 Anos 100 Entradas, integrado nas celebrações do centenário, que tem com o objectivo de ampliar e melhorar os conteúdos disponíveis na Wikipédia, no Commons e na Wikidata sobre o Teatro Variedades e o Parque Mayer, assim como a preencher lacunas de conhecimento sobre as artes cénicas em Portugal. Contribuindo desta forma para preservação da memória coletiva, promovendo o acesso livre ao conhecimento e o uso de ferramentas digitais abertas.

É também no âmbito deste projecto, que irá decorrer de 27 de Abril, a 27 de Junho, o Wikiconcurso Teatro Variedades, uma competição de edições na Wikipédia em português, na qual a comunidade de editores é convidada, a criar e a melhorar artigos sobre artistas, autores, compositores, figurinistas, cenógrafos e espectáculos que marcaram a história do teatro e da cultura em Portugal, contribuindo desta forma para preservação da memória coletiva, de um espaço que marcou a cultura portuguesa, e que acompanhou as transformações sociais, politicas e culturais de Portugal ao longo de 100 anos.

À semelhança, das oficinas, qualquer pessoa pode participar no concurso, independentemente do seu grau de experiência. Caso nunca tenham editado, ou precisem de apoio, os participantes podem juntar-se às oficinas que irão decorrer até Junho, no café do teatro. No final do concurso, os utilizadores que mais contribuírem receberão prémios. 

Para ficar a saber mais sobre o concurso, como concorrer, prémios e outras informações, basta consultar a página: 

Wikiconcurso Teatro Variedades

The 2026 International Women’s Day (IWD), themed “Give to Gain,” offered a powerful moment for us as a community to pause and reflect on how far we have come through the sacrifices of African women, especially female Wikimedians who have given to us and to their grassroots communities. 

To mark this auspicious celebration, the Africa Wiki Women went beyond a single day of celebration to rolling out a series of activities that grew into a month-long campaign focused on impact and inclusion.

The Africa Wiki Women officially launched the Give to Gain 2026 campaign on 6th March 2026 through a virtual event on Zoom, graced by voices of women givers such as Rejoice Agbi, the Founder of the Heels and Sips Network, Ghana, Obiageli Ezeilo, co-founder of the Wiki For Senior Citizens Network, alongside Carolyn Seaman, Founder and Creative Director of Girls Voices Initiatives. Their presence underscored the importance of sustaining conversations around women’s rights beyond just one day, reinforcing the need for continuous engagement and action.

With the focus of the campaign on closing the gender gap on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, the launch unveiled the IWD 2026 edit-a-thon with the aim to create new Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items, while adding the “Philanthropist” statement to the Wikidata items of the African Women Philanthropist category based on their various African languages. As usual, the editors/participants were trained for participation through language-based Wikipedia training, which catered to both our English and French communities, alongside Wikidata training.

Africa Wiki Women’s empowerment through support

In February 2026, the Africa Wiki Women rolled out a call for a female organiser themed “Shape the Narrative” for the IWD Campaign. 

This call was to African women in Egypt, Rwanda, Cameroon and Uganda who are Wikimedians and members of the Africa Wiki Women community who have experience as organisers. 

After the review of the applications received for this Call, Julie.Acom was granted the support to host the in-person event in Uganda, and through this selection, the Africa Wiki Women collaborated with the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda.

The in-person training event held on the 21st of March 2026 in Uganda, Kampala, was led by the female organiser Julie Acom.

The event started with an introduction to the Give to Gain Campaign and its objectives, followed by an introduction to Wikimedia Projects by Mr Michael Kaluba from Wikimedia Uganda User Group. From then on, Sandra Aceng trained participants on improving existing articles on African women, guiding them through adding infoboxes. For the second training session, multiple trainers, including Catherine Nambogo, Ivan Ssenkungu, Brenda Ainomugisha, Chris Liberty Owobusingye handled the translation of articles into Luganda, Runyankole/Rukiga languages. Lastly, Leticia Nabunje and Michael Kaluba were trainers for the creation and improvement of Wikidata items.

The opportunity to shine (our fellows’ experience through the IWD 2026 campaign)

The Africa Wiki Women IWD 2026 campaign provided the  LMF Fellows with opportunities to take on more active roles within the program. By moderating training sessions and supporting office hours, they contributed to facilitating discussions and creating inclusive learning spaces for participants.

These roles also offered insight into the planning and coordination required to deliver successful sessions. From preparation to execution, fellows gained a clearer understanding of the structure behind each activity. In addition, involvement in the edit review processes highlighted the level of rigour involved in ensuring quality contributions throughout the campaign.

Overall, the campaign supported both learning and contribution, allowing fellows to build confidence while playing a role in advancing knowledge equity.

“Moderating for the first time highlighted the importance of preparation and creating an inclusive space where participants feel engaged.” – Lois

“Participating in planning and review processes provided insight into the effort behind the campaign while also introducing new perspectives on the contributions of African women.” – Katie

​​“Participating in the ‘Give to Gain’ campaign allowed me to translate articles and moderate a session, helping improve access to knowledge while strengthening my communication and leadership skills.” –  Emilia

What’s next?

Though the IWD 2026 editathon has ended, the journey of creating impact and bridging the gender based gaps still continues.

Join us to continue to change the narrative through the EditHer Africa Contest, April Edition. Click on the link to register.

Follow us on our social media handles:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Tiktok
• X
• LinkedIn

Hackers are pwning packages at an exhausting clip.

But the hacks are hackneyed. What’s new is the doom cycle: Code that steals keys to publish code to steal more keys.

A zombie army of infected code. And AI is making it worse.

GitHub Actions are a trap

Trivy is an open-source security scanner. But if you used Trivy in late March, you had a bad time.

On March 19th, hackers pushed a version of Trivy that tried to smuggle secrets from anywhere it ran. Trivy cited a “misconfiguration” in their continuous integration (CI) system, GitHub Actions.

But the exploit was less a misconfiguration and more a GitHub Actions trap.

Here’s a simplified version of how Trivy got pwnd¹:

# INSECURE. DO NOT USE.
on:
  pull_request_target

jobs:
  check:
    steps:
      - uses: action/checkout@deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeef
        with:
          ref: refs/pull/${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}/merge
      - uses: ./.github/actions/setup-go
      - uses: some/go-static-analysis@c0ffeec0ffeec0ffeec0ffeec0ffeec0ffeec0ff

At first glance, this code looks fine:

• No secrets referenced.
• Third-party actions pinned to an immutable hash.
• Check out a pull request. Perform some static analysis.

But this code is a verbatim antipattern from a 2021 GitHub blog post titled “preventing pwn requests”:

if the pull_request_target workflow only […] runs untrusted code but doesn’t reference any secrets, is it still vulnerable?

Yes it is

– GitHub Security Lab

The problem is pull_request_target:

• pull_request_target – plunks a nice, juicy GITHUB_TOKEN into the environment.
• actions/checkout – takes an optional parameter persist-credentials, which removes secrets if set to false. But the default for the parameter is true.

Setting the persist-credentials parameter to false has been an open issue in GitHub Actions since 2021.

CI/CD Integration Example (GitHub Actions with Trivy)

    - name: Scan image for vulnerabilities
      uses: aquasecurity/trivy-action@master

Knowledge and diverse voices are woven together like fabric: intertwined through dialogue. That is why we at Wikimedistas de Bolivia are organizing two conferences on Bolivian Textile and Clothing Cultures as part of the regional WikiFuturo campaign. These events were created with the aim of exploring what has been done and what is currently being done in Bolivia in the field of design, particularly regarding the use of textiles and garment production. At the same time, we seek to open a broader conversation about how we approach fashion and how the social and political context influences design and the trends we adopt in our clothing choices.

On the first day, we revisited the work of Daisy Wende alongside her son, Kenny Wende. During his presentation, Kenny took us on a journey through more than three decades of Daisy’s work, highlighting how political and social changes are reflected in her designs. We were also joined by designer Fátima Molina, founder of Diseñarte, a designer-led design lab that has served as a breeding ground for new talent. This gathering of like-minded perspectives helped us identify how Andean and Indigenous influences continue to permeate fashion in the western part of the country.

Finally, Verónica Avendaño, founder of the digital fashion magazine BOHEM, shared her editorial experience: from preparing photo shoots to working with designers, as well as offering a technical perspective on fashion photography. Her presentation proved particularly valuable, given that a large portion of the audience consisted of photographers. Thus, we wove a narrative thread that offered a brief but meaningful glimpse of design in La Paz, with all its nuances, in the almost idyllic setting of the Flavio Machicado Viscarra Foundation.

This process led to a collective assessment that prompted us to organize a second workshop using a different methodology. This time, we sought to engage directly with the craftspeople who make the garments. To this end, we were joined by Olga Cachi and Marta Apaza, who shared their knowledge of polleras, mantillas, and tullmas—woolen accessories used to secure and adorn braids.

The second day fostered a more fluid dialogue between the presenters and attendees. Our colleague Carlillasa also participated, facilitating the conversation thanks to her prior work with Olga and Marta. During this session, topics such as the processes involved in making the traditional pollera, changes in clothing styles, associated costs, and the reasons behind the transformation of these traditions were discussed. The presenters also noted that this work is not their primary source of income, due to the time and effort involved in hand-sewing.

Daniela shared her career path and reflected on how her training translates into her jewelry work, as well as her transition from printmaking to this field. The conversation allowed for an exploration of her interest in the jewelry worn by women in traditional pollera, the social distinctions between styles such as those associated with “cholita” and “señorita”, and the way these references have influenced her own work.

This is precisely the space we sought to create with this conference: one that allows us to understand not only how we dress or how clothing is designed, but also what lies behind its creation and what meanings it holds, especially in the case of women who wear polleras. How do changing trends manifest in their daily lives? How do they construct their expression of identity and elegance?

The workshop series represented a departure from the team’s usual work. However, the goal of bringing diverse voices and perspectives to the WikiFuturo campaign was achieved—and even exceeded our expectations. While results typically take time to materialize, we are already seeing encouraging signs: in the photo challenge linked to the workshop series, at least 50% of the participants are new users.

In this way, our contributions to the collective fabric of knowledge continue to take shape, stitch by stitch. We invite you to visit our social media pages to learn more about our work.

Following the launch of the AWA EmpowerHer Fellowship to mark International Women’s Day 2026, the project has delivered measurable progress in addressing the gender and content gaps across Wikimedia platforms.

Project Overview

Focused on documenting notable women from Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, the fellowship brought together both new and experienced contributors through a structured onboarding programme, training sessions, and ongoing office hours. This approach ensured that participants were not only equipped to contribute effectively but were also supported throughout their editing journey.

Key Achievements

Over the course of the project, contributors achieved the following:

• 22 new Wikipedia articles created on the English Wikipedia
• 50 new Wikidata items created
• 23 Wikipedia articles improved
• 19 Wikidata items improved

These contributions reflect a significant step toward increasing the visibility of African women within global knowledge platforms.

Notable Contributions

Among the articles created were profiles of notable figures, including the current First Lady of South Sudan, Mary Ayen Mayardit and Meseret Manne, the first female coach of the Ethiopian women’s national football team. One article, titled: Rehima Zergaw, was initially nominated for speedy deletion. Following the review, the subject’s notability as a national female footballer was recognised, and the article was retained. This highlights the importance of thorough research and reliable sourcing in content creation.

Community Impact

Beyond content outputs, the fellowship also delivered meaningful community impact. Several contributors, three of whom were new to Wikimedia, shared their experiences during our office hour (for new contributors), describing their first editing experience as both seamless and rewarding. This reflects the effectiveness of the onboarding and support structures put in place throughout the project.

Capacity Building and Leadership Development

The role of trainers was equally significant. Their commitment to guiding participants and delivering training sessions contributed to the overall success of the fellowship. Notably, one of the trainers, Sarah Monday, facilitated a session for the first time, demonstrating the programme’s role in building not just contributors, but also future trainers and community leaders.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

While the project recorded strong outcomes, it was not without challenges. Identifying notable and well-sourced topics initially proved demanding. But as the project progressed, the process became more efficient through structured research.

Exceeding Expectations

One of the highlights of the fellowship is that we exceeded its initial target of 30 articles and items created or improved, demonstrating both the commitment of contributors and the effectiveness of the programme design

Personal Reflection

This fellowship helped me grow personally, especially in how I organise and manage projects. I spent a lot of time conducting in-depth research to identify notable topics and compiled and tracked everything participants contributed throughout the programme. This required me to stay organised, pay attention to details, and be consistent with follow-ups. I also learned how to adapt, solve problems, and communicate more clearly with the team. Overall, it made me more confident in leading and coordinating community activities, and I now have a better approach to handling similar projects in the future.

Conclusion

At its core, the EmpowerHer Fellowship has contributed to strengthening representation on Wikimedia platforms while building a more inclusive and skilled contributor community.

Reflecting on the experience, this project has been both impactful and rewarding. It has reinforced the importance of intentional efforts in closing knowledge gaps and amplifying underrepresented voices.

The progress made through this fellowship underscores a simple but powerful reality: African women deserve to be visible, documented, and celebrated.

Marketing and Information Systems major Tim Qian is a senior at the University of Washington. As part of his Wikipedia assignment, Tim created the new Wikipedia article on the 2008 Shell Bodo Oil Spill.

Tim, creating a brand new Wikipedia article is a big deal! Why did you choose to work on this article? 

In class, we had a reading on Oil Frontiers and the Niger Delta, which was a topic new to me. I remember doing some Wikipedia surfing and eventually coming across a page containing a list of oil spills which referenced the Bodo Oil Spill, but it didn’t have an article of its own at this point. I was really surprised how such a significant spill didn’t have an article, and because I was curious to learn more, I chose to start this article for my Wikipedia project.

How did you choose to approach/organize your work on this article?

My goal for this article was essentially to lay the groundwork so that future Wikipedians could also build on it. For my project, I chose to cover three sections: the spill details, the environmental impacts, and the legal aftermath. I thought these sections would help me meet that goal and give readers a comprehensive overview of the spill.

What did you especially want to get right about it? 

Something I especially wanted to get right was the spill details. Data like the volume of oil spilled and the duration are disputed due to systemic factors and differing reports between oil companies and independent investigations, so I made sure to highlight those differences and what each side reported. Through my research, I also learned a lot more about the systemic issues in the relationship between the residents of the Niger Delta and oil companies, and how this remains an ongoing and relevant topic today. I hope readers feel encouraged to learn more and explore other articles related to the Niger Delta.

Did you build any skills along the way? Was the work meaningful for you?

A skill I definitely developed was writing neutrally. Through my research, I also got to explore topics like media framing and environmental justice. It was really meaningful because it taught me a lot about the media landscape, particularly around visibility and why some stories are more visible than others. One of my early questions was why this spill wasn’t as well known as the Exxon Valdez spill, given its similar magnitude? That led me to learn more about how media narratives are framed and to explore the gaps in environmental communications when it comes to highlighting important topics.

How would you describe the power of Wikipedia?

I think Wikipedia is really crucial in shaping awareness and understanding. It’s a completely free encyclopedia with reliable, up-to-date information that is constantly being reviewed and revised by people around the world. The sheer breadth of coverage geographically and across different languages is also so fascinatingly mind-boggling to me. There’s so much one can explore.

What was your favorite part of editing Wikipedia?

I really enjoyed the research process. It allowed me to build a fuller picture of my topic and develop a much deeper understanding of what happened and what the implications might be going forward, since this is still an ongoing situation in terms of litigation, remediation, and geopolitics.

What was your least favorite part? 

I’d say one of the biggest of the biggest challenges I had was writing neutrally as it wasn’t something I was used to. When it comes to writing, I also have the tendency to spend an hour going through the cycle of writing something and deleting it over and over again. A mental heuristic I came up with that ended up being pretty helpful was asking myself who, what, when, why, and how questions. That really helped me get actual content down on the page. 

What advice would you give to other students starting their first Wikipedia assignment?

My advice for students starting their Wikipedia assignment is to surf for a bit and follow your curiosity. Working on an article is an opportunity to explore a topic more deeply, so if it’s something you’re interested in, it can be a lot of fun.

Many thanks to the Guru Krupa Foundation for supporting students to improve STEM content on Wikipedia!

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

Wikidata needs an open-source developer to make its geographical query results compatible with GPS devices and other geo-spatial tools. Here’s why…

If you query Wikidata (the database sibling project of Wikipedia) for geographically locatable subjects (say, a list of accredited museums in the UK) the results are returned in a table.

When the data has coordinates, with a single click (on the left-hand menu, in desktop view) the results can also be displayed on a map.

The tabular data can be downloaded (via the right-hand menu) in a number of formats, such as CSV, HTML or JSON.

The Wikidata community would like users to be able also to export the data in one or more GPS-friendly formats. These are not only useful for GPS devices, but are compatible with other mapping and visualisation tools. I opened a ticket for this feature request—in 2019!

A patch to do this, supporting GPX, GeoJSON and KML, has been coded. However, it relies on a number of libraries, which in turn introduce numerous dependencies on other libraries. Because these libraries all need to be security-checked, and maintained, using the patch would be cost-prohibitive. As a result, it has been declined.

We are told that it should be possible to code the conversions directly, so that the libraries are not needed. Or to look at removing what we do not need from those libraries. This “requires a developer with a bit more understanding of the formats to look into it”.

I’m not a developer, and the nuts-and-bolts of this are mysterious to me.

We need someone with the relevant knowledge and experience, willing to work on an open-source fix, for the common good.

Who will step up and take on this pro-bono work?

Update: 18 June 2025—WDQS now offers GeoJSON downloads for results that include coordinates. KML & GPX should follow. See the ticket link, above, or try it for yourself here (works best on desktop; mouse over right-hand edge to get menu with download link).

Update2: 23 April 2026—Data can also be downloaded as GPX or KML (using the first column for name values).

The post Developer needed to make Wikidata’s geographical data compatible with GPS tools appeared first on Andy Mabbett, aka pigsonthewing..

In a significant step toward preserving the rich oral heritage of the Igbo people, the Igbo Wikimedians User Group sponsored a group of creatives called Wiki Voice Visuals who successfully organized Documenting Igbo Proverbs and Building Audio Archives, a Wikimedia project dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Igbo cultural wisdom through the documentation of traditional proverbs (Ilu Igbo) in audio format.

The project was implemented as a hybrid event, combining online collaboration with in-person field activities, bringing together volunteers, community members, and everyday citizens in a shared effort to safeguard a living tradition.

Igbo proverbs occupy a central place in the life of the Igbo people. They are the vehicles through which wisdom is passed from one generation to the next, the language through which elders counsel, communities settle disputes, and identity is affirmed. Yet today, many of these proverbs are gradually disappearing eroded by language shift, rapid urbanization, and the widening gap between generations. What the grandfather knew by heart, the grandchild may never hear.

Project Highlights

This project was launched online on the 4th of April 2026, with the Street and Market Interview Challenge taking place on the 10th of April 2026 in Awka, Anambra State, it ran from 4th up until the 18th of April 2026. The two-week period yielded significant contributions across documentation, audio archiving, and community engagement.

With over 10 dedicated participants, the project was focused on recording Igbo proverbs in audio format and archiving them on open platforms accessible to all, the project ensures that these expressions of collective wisdom are not lost to time but remain alive, searchable, and available to future generations of Igbo speakers, scholars, and cultural custodians wherever they may be in the world.

One of the most vibrant and memorable aspects of the project was the Street and Market Interview Challenge, which took place on the streets and within the bustling stalls of Eke Awka Market in Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria. Volunteers went directly into the heart of the community, approaching Igbo indigenes and inviting them to share a proverb they know in their own words, in their own voice along with its meaning. It was knowledge drawn not from books or classrooms, but from lived experience, from what grandmothers whispered and elders declared at gatherings.

The energy was remarkable. Some participants paused, smiled, and reached deep into memory before speaking. Others needed no prompting at all, offering proverbs with the ease of someone reciting something they had carried their whole life. Each response was a small window into a world of wisdom that has been passed down through generations and in that moment, was being preserved for generations yet to come. It was, by every measure, a wonderful experience a reminder that the knowledge we seek is not always in archives and libraries. Sometimes it lives in the market, in the crowd, in the ordinary person going about their day, waiting only to be asked.

Key Outcomes

• Enriching the Igbo Wiktionary: Volunteer contributions resulted in 30 new Igbo proverbs being created on the Wiktionary, with 50 new audio recordings attached to their relevant proverb entries giving the written words a living, spoken voice.
• Enriching Wikimedia Commons: 50 audio recordings of Igbo proverbs were uploaded to Commons, each accompanied by captions and descriptions written in both English and Igbo. A dedicated category Igbo Proverbs was created to house all recordings for easy discovery and access.
• Fostering Community Growth: The Street and Market Interview Challenge brought the project into public life. Volunteers went into the streets and into Eke Awka market, asking people to share a proverb they know and explain its meaning. Beyond the recordings, the exercise drew new followers to the Igbo Wikimedia social media pages, expanding the community’s reach organically.
• Improved Volunteer retention: Participants who are part of the newly growing community in this part of Nigeria were taught a new Wikimedia project and were carried along.

Challenges

• Declining Knowledge of Igbo Proverbs: One of the most significant observations from the field was that a large number of participants; including native Igbo speakers could not readily recall proverbs. This points to a growing generational gap in the transmission of oral traditions and underscores the urgency of this documentation work. The language is alive, but its deeper wisdom is quietly fading.
• Confusion Between Proverbs and Riddles: A recurring challenge during interviews was participants presenting riddles (gwam gwam gwam) as proverbs (ilu). While both are valuable forms of Igbo oral expression, they are distinct.

Looking Ahead

• Intensify Documentation Efforts: Given the evident erosion of proverb knowledge among the general public, the project should be scaled up significantly in scope, frequency, and geographic spread. More communities across Igboland should be visited, and the documentation drive should be treated with the urgency it deserves before this knowledge is lost entirely.
• Develop Strategies to Engage Men on Camera: Future sessions should explore approaches to make male participants more comfortable such as offering audio-only recording options, conducting group interviews where the camera feels less focused on one individual.
• Take Wiki to the Streets: The project has demonstrated that public spaces markets, motor parks, community squares are rich grounds for engagement. Rather than limiting Wikimedia awareness to schools and institutions, future activations should deliberately target everyday public spaces where people gather. This approach not only yields richer oral content but also introduces Wikipedia and its sister projects to audiences who may never encounter them otherwise.
• Expand and Elaborate the Project: The enthusiasm expressed by members of the public many of whom urged the team to continue and do more is a strong signal. This project has the potential to grow into something much larger: a structured, ongoing Igbo oral heritage archive that feeds not just Wikimedia but schools, cultural institutions, broadcasters, and researchers. A more elaborate edition with dedicated funding, trained volunteers, and a multi-city rollout should be planned for the next phase.

We invite more Wikimedians, Video editors, Audio editors to join Wiki Voice Visuals future projects. Together, we can showcase our african culture to the world through Audios and Videos.

Join the movement! Create your Wikimedia account today and start contributing.

Important Links

• For more details about the event, visit Documenting_Igbo_Proverbs_and_Building_Audio_Archives_2026
• To read more about Wiki Voice Visuals, visit: Wiki Voice Visuals on Meta-Wiki
• To join the movement, visit our page on Wikimedia Commons: Wiki Voice Visuals/Members

A film may end with a final cut but its story doesn’t. In today’s digital age, cinema continues to live, evolve, and travel long after the credits roll. It moves through archives, platforms, and knowledge systems, shaping how stories are remembered and rediscovered. This powerful idea took center stage during the Nepal International Film Festival (NIFF) 2026, where cinema met the world of open knowledge and digital preservation.

Held from April 2 to 6, 2026 in Kathmandu, Nepal International Film Festival stands as one of Nepal’s premier cinematic platforms. Since its inception in 2018, NIFF has grown into a global meeting ground bringing together filmmakers, artists, and audiences from over 50 countries to celebrate storytelling and foster meaningful dialogue around cinema and society.

Amid screenings and artistic exchanges, a thought-provoking session titled “Beyond the Final Cut: Wikipedia, Film Archiving and Internet Feeding” offered a deeper look into what happens to films after they leave the screen.

A panel discussion titled: “Beyond the Final Cut: Wikipedia, Film Archiving and Internet Feeding” moderated by Alok Lamsal and presented by Nabin K. Sapkota

The Afterlife of Cinema

Films are often seen as complete once released but in reality, they begin a second life online. This afterlife is shaped by how films are documented, archived, and shared across platforms.

Wikipedia plays a crucial role here. As a global, open-access knowledge platform, it transforms films into structured information capturing details about production, themes, cultural context, and reception. This ensures that films are not just watched, but also remembered, studied, and rediscovered by audiences worldwide.

At NIFF, this perspective challenged filmmakers to rethink their work, not just as visual products, but as knowledge assets.

Film Archiving: Preserving Stories Beyond Screens

Archiving is often misunderstood as simply storing films. In reality, it is about preserving cultural memory. From scripts and posters to interviews and behind-the-scenes documentation, every element contributes to a film’s identity. Archiving – in this sense, is not passive it is an active effort to safeguard heritage.

What made this session particularly impactful was its ability to bridge two worlds: cinema and open knowledge.

Filmmakers were encouraged to think beyond production and distribution to consider:

• Documentation as part of storytelling
• Licensing as a tool for accessibility
• Archiving as a responsibility

As Nepal International Film Festival continues to evolve, it is no longer just a space for showcasing films – it is becoming a platform for rethinking the lifecycle of stories.

This is where platforms like Wikipedia and its sister projects become essential. They act as gateways ensuring that films are searchable, verifiable, and connected to a wider knowledge network.

In an era shaped by AI and data-driven systems, this process becomes even more critical. The internet feeds on structured knowledge and what gets documented today shapes what is learned tomorrow.

“Beyond the Final Cut” reminds us that cinema doesn’t end in the editing room. It lives on in archives, in databases, and across the vast landscape of the internet.

From March 23 to April 17, 2026, the “Japan-Korea Friendship Editing Month March 2026“, commemorating Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, was held online. Since the start of editathon in 2024, Wikimedians from Korea and Japan have deepened their exchanges, including mutual participation in Wikimedia conferences held in both countries last year. And this spring, a four-week international editathon was held. I wrote and revised three articles related to Korea during this editathon, which I would like to introduce.

The World Cup Bridge

While preparing the Japanese Wikipedia page for Editathon, I went to the Commons to look for a suitable photo. That’s when I found this picture of the World Cup Bridge. For me, the World Cup refers to the 2002 Japan-Korea joint FIFA World Cup, and I vividly remember the excitement at the time. There are other World Cups besides soccer, and younger people probably don’t remember the 2002 matches, but I was happy to learn that there is a bridge in Korea named after it. I felt it was a symbol of bridging between the two countries, so I translated the English Wikipedia article into Japanese. I learned from the comments on the article that there is also a bridge with the same name in Yokohama, Japan.

Human Acts

To learn about other countries, I make it a point to read their literary works. Many Korean literary works have been introduced to Japan since ancient times, but this time I picked up Human Acts by Nobel Prize-winning author Han Kang. This 2014 work was translated into Japanese in 2016 and published by CUON inc., a publisher known for introducing Korean literature. While there was already an article about this work on the Japanese Wikipedia, it was rather brief, so I decided to read the book to add to it.

The work is based on the Gwangju Uprising that occurred in South Korea in 1980, but I knew absolutely nothing about the Gwangju Uprising. However, this work depicts what happened there and what became of the people who were there afterward from various perspectives. Also, by carefully reading book reviews, I gradually began to see the author’s position and the state of contemporary Korean literature. I then edited the information obtained from the work, information found through internet searches, and information researched at the library, and added to the original article. I wonder if I have been able to take a step closer to Korea and the Korean people.

Dattan no Uma (The Tatar House)

Korea appears in various ways in Japanese novels. Tsujihara Noboru‘s Dattan no Uma (The Tartar Horse) is set in Edo-period Japan, Korea, and Mongolia, and was published in 2011. I remember eagerly reading it every day when it was serialized in the newspaper before that, and being overwhelmed by its grand scale, so I decided to write an article about it for this Japan-Korea Editathon. I didn’t have the hardcover book on hand, so I borrowed it from the library, but as I turned the pages, the thrilling plot brought back the same excitement, and I ended up buying the paperback version from a used bookstore.

When I looked into book reviews, I found several, so I decided to go to the National Diet Library and read them all. I requested books and magazines to read, and I also checked condensed editions and microfilms in the newspaper reading room, bringing home copies of the articles I needed. I brought my laptop with me, but I got so engrossed in writing another article Human Acts that it was already evening, so I worked from home. I was so happy when I found book reviews by Ikuo Kameyama, a scholar of Russian literature, and Yuko Tanaka, former president of Hosei University and a scholar of Edo culture. When the article I published was selected as a “new article” in Wikipedian’s voting, I was truly glad I participated in this editathon.

Looking at the Editathon page, you can see that many people from both Japan and Korea contributed, creating and adding to numerous articles. It’s wonderful to see this kind of exchange spreading through Wikipedia.

Recently, the issue of restricting access to Wikipedia has been widely discussed again in Indonesia. For some, this may seem like a mere technical issue, simply a website that can’t be opened and can be replaced with other sources. However, for students, university students, and the book lover community, this situation is far more serious because it concerns access to knowledge itself. Wikipedia has long been one of the easiest ways to quickly and freely understand various topics. When access is disrupted or restricted, not only convenience but also learning opportunities are affected. This raises the realization that reading alone is not enough, especially when access to knowledge is not always reliable.

Amidst this situation, the book lover community is starting to take a different stance. They no longer want to be readers dependent on access, but also want to contribute to keeping knowledge alive. WikiLiteratur 2026 exists as a space for that. This collaborative program between KlubWiki Universitas Brawijaya, Readingalam, and Malang Great People introduced Wikipedia not just as a place to find information, but as an open space for sharing. For many participants, this was a new experience that changed their perspective on reading. The two-day event, held from April 10 to 11, 2026, demonstrated how this process works. The first day featured a Wikilatih session introducing the basics of Wikipedia editing, followed by a session reading a non-fiction book brought by each participant. Reading in this context was no longer limited to personal understanding but rather directed towards material to be shared. The second day continued with a discussion session, where participants presented their reading and provided feedback, before finally moving on to editing Wikipedia articles.

However, in practice, participants also immediately faced various challenges. Many newly created accounts experienced editing restrictions, while the available time was insufficient to complete the entire process optimally. Furthermore, access constraints forced some participants to use VPNs to continue accessing and editing Wikipedia. On the other hand, account and activity restrictions also forced the committee to find alternative solutions, such as allowing participants to upload using friends’ accounts. One participant even ended up uploading their contribution together with another participant’s account. Some participants also chose to continue editing after the event concluded due to time and access limitations during the event. This situation demonstrates that even in an open space like Wikipedia, there are still limitations to overcome, both technical and access-related. However, this experience fostered the realization that knowledge is not always easily accessible and, therefore, cannot be simply relied upon as readily available. It needs to be preserved, cultivated, and shared.

WikiLiteratur 2026 ultimately demonstrated that literacy does not stop at reading. In conditions where access to knowledge can be limited, the ability to process and share information becomes increasingly important. The book-loving community holds great potential in this regard, and through programs like WikiLiteratur, this potential is beginning to be channeled into tangible contributions. From reading, then writing, then sharing, book lovers began to take part in the liberation of knowledge, ensuring that knowledge is not only owned by a few people, but remains alive and accessible to everyone.

Across Ghana, Ramadan is a time of reflection, prayer, and community. It is also a period filled with traditions and practices that are not always well documented online. Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026 created an opportunity to capture and share these moments on Wikimedia platforms.The Dagbani Wikimedians User Group took part in the global Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026 campaign, joining other communities around the world to document Ramadan-related culture and experiences. The contest ran from 16th February to 28th March 2026, attracting volunteers who contributed through media uploads and documentation.

The campaign aimed to reduce gaps in knowledge about Ramadan traditions and Islamic history. It also encouraged participation from underrepresented communities, allowing people to share their stories in ways that reflect their local context and language.

During the contest, more than 20 volunteers actively contributed to the campaign. Contributors focused on uploading images that show how Ramadan is observed in different parts of Ghana. These included moments of prayer, food preparation, community gatherings, and daily life during the fasting period. In total, about 470 images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

The Top Female in the Photo Contest is Wun-nam Rahimatu, while Ibn Dagara is the Top Contributor. In the Edit-a-thon Contest, Tenaciuos Ntaawa is the Top Contributor, followed by Tunteeya1 as the 2nd Top Contributor and SA twenty as the 3rd Top Contributor, with Tenaciuos Ntaawa also is the Top Female Contributor.

Beyond the numbers, the campaign helped bring forward real-life experiences of Ramadan in Ghana. It highlighted the diversity of practices and created space for better representation of Islamic culture on Wikimedia platforms.

Through its participation, the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group contributed to a growing collection of knowledge that promotes cultural understanding, preserves traditions, and ensures that more voices are represented online.

Readers are encouraged to explore the uploaded images on Wikimedia Commons to experience how Ramadan is observed across Ghana and to support the effort of documenting cultural heritage. Contributors and community members are also invited to take part in future Wikimedia campaigns to continue sharing knowledge with the world.

Important Links 

• Uploaded Images
• Best Photo 
• Second Best Photo
• Third Best Photo
  

Season 2

By Rupal Karia – Outreach & Community Coordinator | 22 Apr 2026

We are excited to announce a second season of the virtual Sandbox Session and invite community members to propose sessions they are interested in leading. Community Sandbox Sessions offer a space for community members to share their learning, meet other Wikimedians and try new things. They are volunteer-led events, supported by Wikimedia UK. 

Our first season featured sessions on the Wikidata tool Duplicity, how to edit calmly in controversial areas, a wikisource transcribe-a-thon, smell-related content on Wiki, and being an en.wiki admin!  Huge thanks to all our presenters – Josef Anthony, Femke Njise, Martin Poulter, Lucy Moore, and Harry Mitchell.

The type or format of an event is open; however, we’d like to encourage proposals which go beyond the traditional Wikipedia edit-a-thon. Maybe there is something you do on Wikimedia projects you’d like to do in community with others? Here are some session suggestions.

• A talk on how to advocate for the release of images from a collection
• Here’s how I overcame hurdles related to adding under-represented content
• Let’s add images to Wikipedia from this collection
• My special niche on Wikimedia projects
• Let’s spend an hour thanking people on Wikipedia
• Let’s build a worklist and find reliable sources for this under represented topic on Wikipedia
• Hints and tips on translation of articles
• Here’s a cool Wikidata tool I’ve found, let’s try it out
• How to add structured data to images
• Add pictures to articles together
• If you have extended user rights and are involved in the governance of Wikipedia tell us about your role 
• Here’s how I got this article to Featured Article status

We would love to hear any other ideas that you might have.

Support WMUK can offer 

• Advice on refining your format
• Setting up of Event Registration 
• Event promotion through UK listings & mailing lists
• Hosting on the WMUK Zoom account / Google Meet
• Friendly space support from a WMUK staff member (or volunteer) during the event 

Dates and times

Events can take place throughout the year, and can also be on an evening or weekend.  Suggested duration is an hour, but longer (or shorter!) events could be considered. We’re suggesting that these events are online in the first instance, to reach the widest possible audience, and all events should of course be run in line with the Wikimedia UK Safe Space policy.  

If you’re interested in running a session, please submit a proposal here.

Deadline

The initial deadline for submitting proposals is 18th May 2026. If you have any questions, please contact rupal.karia@wikimedia.org.uk

Season 1

By Dr. Sara Thomas – Programme Manager | 24 April 2025

Do you have an idea for a Wiki-learning session?  Have you found something that you’d like to share with other Wikimedians, or an idea that you’d like to try out?  And would you like some help from Wikimedia UK in sharing it? 

In response to feedback from the community around having opportunities to improve Wiki-skills, and connecting with other community members, and as part of the overall training package for 2025, we’re excited to introduce a new strand of event programming, called Community Sandbox Sessions.

We’re looking to programme up to 6 virtual events over the next year, which would be open to all members of the UK community, and supported by Wikimedia UK.  We’re asking community members to propose sessions that you’d like to lead.

Session suggestions

The type or format of any event is open; but we’d like to encourage proposals which go beyond the traditional Wikipedia editathon – for example: 

• Here’s a cool Wikidata tool I’ve found, let’s try it out
• Wikisource transcribe-a-thon
• A talk on how to run backstage pass events
• Here’s how I got this article to Featured Article status
• Let’s add images from this collection to Wikipedia
• A mobile meeting where we take pictures of our local area for Wikimedia Commons
• Minoritised language work – eg: adding Wikidata labels
• Building a worklist & finding reliable sources for future events

Dates and times

Events can take place throughout the year, and can also be on an evening or weekend.  Suggested duration is an hour, but longer (or shorter!) events could be considered.  We’re suggesting that these events are online in the first instance, to reach the widest possible audience, and all events should of course be run in line with the Wikimedia UK Safe Space policy.  

Support WMUK can offer 

• Advice on refining your format
• Setting up of Event Registration 
• Event promotion through UK listings & mailing lists
• Hosting on the WMUK Zoom account / Google Meet
• Friendly space support from a WMUK staff member (or volunteer) during the event 

This is very much an experiment, and we hope that the format will allow community members to share knowledge and skills, and get to know other UK Wikimedians, as well as test out new ideas!  If you’d be interested in running a session, please submit a proposal here.

Deadline

The initial deadline for submitting proposals is Tuesday 20th May. 

If you have any questions, please contact sara.thomas@wikimedia.org.uk.

The post Community Sandbox Sessions appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

The “Cultural Heritage and Notable Figures” campaign is Wikimedia Ukraine’s annual initiative that brings people together to preserve and promote Ukraine’s cultural heritage on Wikipedia. Participants create and improve articles about historical landmarks and the people who have shaped — and continue to shape — Ukraine.

In the summer 2025, participants created or significantly improved 570 articles, including 137 focused on Crimean Tatar cultural heritage. This is one of the most popular campaigns we run, and it resulted in hundreds of articles that are now accessible to readers and help deepen understanding of Ukraine’s cultural legacy.

Among the newly created and improved articles about heritage sites are entries on the Brotherhood Building of the Assumption Cathedral in Kharkiv and the isars of the Crimean mountains — remains of medieval fortifications, monasteries, and castles located in hard-to-reach areas.

The campaign also included many articles about notable individuals. For example, new articles were created about Ayshe Kokieva, a Crimean Tatar poet and author of children’s literature, and Olgierd Strashynskyi, a conductor and composer from Mariupol. These articles help bring a human dimension to history and culture.

Another important outcome was the creation of articles about lesser-known cultural heritage sites, many of which were previously almost absent from Wikipedia — even for Ukrainian readers. These include castles such as Rohatyn, Pidkamin, Lokachi, Kukilnyk, Mezhyrich, Novo-Chortoryisk, Novo-Chetvertynsk, Kalush, Kamin-Kashyrskyi, Dunaivtsi, and others.

A dedicated part of the campaign focused on Crimean Tatar cultural heritage. Within this category, more than one hundred articles were created about history, culture, architecture, and notable figures of the Crimean Tatar people, an ethnic minority in Ukraine whose home region Crimea was occupied by Russia in 2014. These are often topics with limited available sources and low representation across languages, which makes this work especially important for preserving and increasing their visibility.

Jury member Maryna Chala shared her reflection:

“While evaluating articles on Crimean Tatar heritage, I followed formal criteria — structure, sources, style. But sometimes, as you read more closely, you move beyond fact-checking and begin to feel the story itself. This is especially true when contributors work with limited sources, where even the smallest piece of information becomes valuable.
The article that affected me the most was ‘Denial of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union.’ It is not just about historical events — it is about the systematic denial of a people’s right to their identity, and an attempt to erase it, something that is still felt by future generations.”

The contest took place during Russia’s ongoing full-scale war in Ukraine. Despite uncertainty and difficult conditions, participants continued their work. This once again shows how important it is to preserve cultural memory, even — and especially — in times like these.

The competition included several award categories: highest-quality contribution, best new articles, best improved articles, best newcomer articles, and a special nomination for Crimean Tatar cultural heritage.

It was especially encouraging to see that some of the best newcomers were graduates of our training program for people aged 55+.

We thank everyone who contributed — participants, the organizing team, and the jury for their thorough and thoughtful work.

We plan to continue this campaign in the future, as there are still many gaps to fill and many stories that deserve to be documented.

You can explore all articles created and improved within the Cultural Heritage and Notable Figures campaign at this link.

Articles submitted to the special nomination dedicated to Crimean Tatar heritage can be found here.

The main campaign page, including information about the winners, is available on the Ukrainian Wikipedia.

🕑 1 hour 3 minutes

Sandra Fauconnier is an art historian by training who works on digital projects in the cultural sector. She has worked at different times for Wikimedia Nederland, the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wikimedia Sverige.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Sandra Fauconnier user page on Meta-Wiki
• Sandra Fauconnier user page on Wikidata
• Sandra Fauconnier user page on MediaWiki Commons
• Structured Data on Commons
• Modeling works on Commons without a Wikidata item
• Sandra reading from the "Paul Otlet" article for WikiReadings

09/04/2026-15/04/2026

Mapping

• Comments are requested on this proposal:
  • terminal=yes to consistently map freight terminals and better describe connected transport modes and handled cargo.

Mapping campaigns

• A new MapRoulette challenge in Germany uses Mapillary-detected traffic signs to identify and add missing access restrictions in OpenStreetMap. The initial focus is on German regulatory signs such as DE:260.

Community

• Raquel Dezidério blogged about her participation in ‘Mapping Together’, a virtual meeting of the MapYourGrid project, representing the Virtual Institute for Sustainable Development – IVIDES.org (Brazil). The overall objective of the meeting was to demonstrate the structure of Wikidata and discuss improvements to the connection between the MapYourGrid web map, Wikidata, and Wikipedia, which have been adopted to document objects related to the power distribution network map using OpenStreetMap. The project is maintaining the osm-wikidata-toolset repository on GitHub and invites you to map what is missing for your country on OSM.
• A message from CasGroenigen on the OpenStreetMap Community forum warned of possible incorrect OSM edits related to a Pokémon GO event targeting specific landscape types. Mappers are encouraged to monitor their areas and check suspicious changes using tools such as OSMCha.
• On Mastodon users have discussed open-source Android apps for cycling, including OsmAnd, CoMaps, BikeRouter, and FitoTrack. The conversation also highlighted a request for a dedicated cycling layer in CoMaps.
• Pierre-Yves Beaudouin tooted that OpenStreetMap is now available as an official icon in FontAwesome. This makes it easier to integrate OSM into web applications and designs.
• rphyrin noticed that MapComplete’s recent new feature of adding pictures to reviews is very relevant to a September 2025 discussion thread by boramalper regarding a crowd-sourced review service for OpenStreetMap.
• Andy Townsend explained how vector tile processing performance can be improved by reducing data volume, for example by delaying the display of smaller features. The changes halved tile sizes and highlight the importance of cartographic generalisation for both performance and readability.
• Christoph Hormann examined the development and use of tags related to the key waterway in OpenStreetMap. Despite regional differences and ambiguities, the analysis shows that the classification, which has evolved over time, remains widely used and functional.
• Ruslan Fatih, an OpenStreetMap contributor from Kazakhstan, shared ► how he got into OpenStreetMap (and why ‘scary maps’ turned out to be the most useful hobby).

Imports

• Sweety_Kumar stated on the OpenStreetMap Community Forum that students from IIT Delhi propose importing hydrology data from the CoRE Stack project, such as watersheds and water bodies, into OpenStreetMap. The ultimate goal is to improve accessibility further to enable analysis and collaborative enhancement within the OSM ecosystem.
• The Kanach Yerevan initiative has proposed importing around 11,000 mapped urban trees into OpenStreetMap, based on volunteer field surveys. The dataset includes species and size information and is planned to be integrated gradually following import guidelines.

Events

• Bastian Greshake Tzovaras presented how CoMaps can be used for humanitarian use cases with the open technology and innovation working group of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap. The presentation slides are available online.
• The State of the Map Baltics 2026 conference will take place on Thursday 4 June in Riga, bringing together the OSM and GIS communities from Northern and Eastern Europe. Participation is free and talk submissions are encouraged.
• thapa prativa reported on Nepal’s Inclusive Mapping Week 2025; at the inaugural event there were over 400 participants who learned, mapped, and collaborated with OpenStreetMap. A key focus was humanitarian mapping and the encouragement of women’s participation in the geospatial space.

Education

• More than 20 students from a high school in Pesaro (Italy) have mapped their town in OpenStreetMap as part of a school project, making over 30,000 edits within two months. The initiative was proposed by their teacher Galessandroni to promote local mapping through hands-on contribution.

Maps

• The OpenStreetMap Ops Team reported that the standard map layer on openstreetmap.org is now running OSM Carto version 6.0.0 (we reported earlier).
• Daniel Dufour wrote, on his LinkedIn account, about the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority Route 4, a web map created with OpenStreetMap, MapTiler, JavaScript, and maplibre, which traces a route with its stops and buses. The source code is available on GitHub.
• Steven Feldman has published a map gallery on the KnowWhere portal, showcasing a series of experimental mapping projects. Each project includes reflections on what worked, what didn’t, and tips for others creating their own maps.

OSM in action

• Hans on the Bike showed that KLM uses OpenStreetMap data in its onboard displays for in flight map visualisations.
• mackerski described how he used ChatGPT to record GNSS track logs directly from a car browser to map the Dublin Port Tunnel. He worked in collaboration with Guillaume Rischard and the solution was tested on a Tesla model 3 and a Volvo XC90. The experiments show that even without GNSS signals, dead reckoning can produce useful data, and highlighted potential improvements to the OSM track logging workflow.

Open Data

• The New York MTA has released new open datasets on bus routes and stops, which they have combined with speed data to analyse and visualise bus traffic flow in detail.

Software

• The BRouter project, a configurable OSM offline router with elevation awareness, announced an upcoming server migration introducing the new lookups.dat version 11.1, additional pseudo-tags, a modernised library, and improved elevation data. The changes can already be tested on a preview server, with a new app version also planned.
• CoMaps has received a trust score of 9.6 from European & Open Source Alternatives, making it one of the top-rated map alternatives alongside OpenStreetMap.
• Oliver Wipfli reported on the progress of the open-source Mapterhorn project, which provides global terrain data as PMTiles and is now widely used (we reported earlier). The pipeline uses Copernicus GLO30, a global 30 m resolution dataset, as a baseline and refines it with local models. A new grant from the NLnet Foundation (which distributes funding from the EU Commission) will improve the pipeline to include open aerial imagery, as an extended project titled ‘Mapterhorn Imagery’ .
• OpenTrafficMap is a new project with a focus on visualising real-time data from traffic signals and C-ITS-enabled vehicles on top of OpenStreetMap. The current focus is on Graz (Austria), where a higher density of tracked signals and vehicles are already available.
• The OSRM API documentation has been refreshed with a cleaner design that provides easy navigation and covers all six OSRM services: Route, Table, Map Matching, Trip Planning, Nearest, and Tile. OSRM is a high performance routing engine for OpenStreetMap data and one of the most widely used in the world.
• The GNOME Maps project is working on displaying public transport delays using the Transitous and MOTIS APIs. In addition to scheduled times and real-time updates, status indicators will be taken into account. MOTIS is the acronym for the Modular Open Transportation Information System.
• Stadia Maps is offering a public preview of traffic-influenced routing based on OpenStreetMap, integrating real-time and historical traffic data. The feature targets use cases where accurate travel times, such as logistics and ride-hailing, are required.
• The ‘WillCycle GPS Art Generator’ allows users to turn drawings into real-world routes by matching them to roads and paths. It uses BRouter and OpenStreetMap data to generate GPX tracks for creative cycling routes.

Programming

• Cláudio Tereso demonstrated how OpenStreetMap data can be integrated via the Overpass API into Power BI to create interactive maps of wild swimming locations. Photos and additional information are also included.
• Thomas Derflinger has developed a Docker container to run your own local Overpass API instance. This stateless Docker container keeps OSM data on your host file system, while providing all the tools needed for data conversion and querying. It includes a simple shell script to download and ingest OSM data and it also runs on Raspberry Pi 5. The container does not implement updates from OSM. We reported on Roland Olbricht’s Docker container earlier and both Kai Johnson and Wiktor Niesiobędzki have their own versions.
• wielandb’s StreetComplete pull request proposed a new quest to capture the direction in which bicycles may travel on separate pavements and cycleways. The approach considers country-specific rules and visible signage to avoid incorrect data.

Releases

• [1] Ralph Straumann presented Terraink, a web application for creating stylised map posters based on OpenStreetMap data. It offers extensive customisation options for layout, colours, and content, targeting users who want to design unique maps for print or social media.
• Version 3.16 of OpenMapTiles brought improvements to the transportation layer, including better road connections, additional path information, and enhanced styling for roads and railways.
• Version 2026.04.07-8 of CoMaps updated OSM data and fixed several crashes, including issues with routing and edit uploads. It also introduced map style improvements, such as better road and tree visibility, and additional POI information.
• The April update of Organic Maps introduced elevation profiles for hiking and cycling routes, improved address search (especially in the US), and enabled seamless map rendering across the anti-meridian.
• MapComplete announced several new features, such as adding pictures to place reviews, a colour-coded maxspeed theme, and updates to the cycle-infra theme.
• Yohan Boniface has released version 3.7.3 of uMap. This update addressed an issue that occurred when cloning maps, where layer relationships were not copied correctly. In addition, a minor bug in the Docker configuration was fixed, so that nginx is now ready to use right away.
• OSRM version 26.4.0 brought multiple improvements, including enhancements to routing profiles (e.g., better handling of cycleway=* and sidewalk=* tags) plus various stability and build fixes. It also modernised the release process with automated monthly releases and a new versioning scheme.
• Marcus Jaschen reported that Bikerouter’s shortlink and QR code service has been migrated to a new server and that a new web service for generating route preview images has been developed. Both changes prepare for an upcoming feature: a built-in route manager that will allow you to store, organise, and restore planned routes on the server.
• Version 2.0 of Transportflow has been released ►, introducing a ‘radar’ feature that shows areas reachable by public transport within a given time. It is based in part on OpenStreetMap data alongside timetable and real-time information.
• Alexis Lecanu (aka ravenfeld) released version 1.21.0 of the Baba app, introducing automatic screen orientation based on camera sensors. This improves usability when capturing images, e.g., for Panoramax.
• Tiri, an independent developer based in Germany, reported on the OpenStreetMap Community forum that he is building Xopoz, an Android GNSS team tracking app for professional field teams, such as mountain guides, search and rescue volunteers, NGO field operations, and adventure tour operators. The app is built entirely on OpenStreetMap data with zero Google dependency and the geolocations are end-to-end encrypted.

OSM in the media

• The City of Seattle has temporarily removed its official bike map PDF in the wake of new accessibility requirements, according to an article on the Seattle Bike Blog. The article highlighted OpenStreetMap as an alternative, which offers more detailed and up-to-date cycling infrastructure and is continuously improved by the community.

Other “geo” things

• Attila Bátorfy wrote about Dutch ‘cartocubism’, a forgotten attempt to simplify maps from the interwar period.
• The website trainjazz.com uses subway train geolocation data to create a dynamic soundscape, where each train represents a musical note. The result is an ever-changing composition that even adapts to the user’s geolocation. Jake Z commented on kottke.org that there is a 10 year old application similar to this called Conductor, on mta.me, developed by Alexander Chen, where the New York subway system is turned into a string instrument.
• Brilliant Maps has published their ‘Map of Asia Made Up of its National Animals’. A similar map for European countries has also been published. Both maps were created by Ibis_Wolfieand and there is some discussion on Reddit about these maps.
• The article ‘Real Maps for Imaginary Places: a journey into the cartography of literature’, written by Neely Tucker and published on the Library of Congress’ website, highlighted how maps have long played a key role in literature, from Treasure Island to The Lord of the Rings. These maps help readers understand fictional worlds spatially and make the stories more tangible.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
	Milano	Building 4A, Room Fassò – Politecnico di Milano	PoliMappers Maptedì	2026-04-16
	Freiburg im Breisgau	CCCFR, Adlerstr. 12a, Freiburg (Grethergelände)	OSM-Treffen Freiburg/Brsg.	2026-04-16
			OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting	2026-04-17
	Potsdam	Kellermann	Potsdamer Mappertreffen	2026-04-17
		Golem, Avane, Empoli	Mapping Day ad Empoli	2026-04-18
		Dijital Bilgi Derneği	OSM-TR Meet-Up – OSM League Pit-Stop	2026-04-18
			Mapping Resilience Across the Yamuna Basin (UN Mappers & The FOSS Club India)	2026-04-19
	Chennai Corporation		Mapping Party @ Chennai	2026-04-19
	Liège	ULiège-RISE	Understanding the OpenStreetMap ecosystem	2026-04-20
			Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]	2026-04-21
	Lyon	Tubà	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon	2026-04-21
	Derby	The Brunswick, Railway Terrace, Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up	2026-04-21
	City of London	The Globe pub, Moorgate	London pub meet-up	2026-04-21
	Bonn	Dotty’s	199. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-04-21
	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-04-21
		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-04-21
	Richmond	Richmond, VA USA	Capital One TPM Summit Global Mapathon	2026-04-23
	Bratislava	Prírodovedecká fakulta UK Bratislava	Missing Maps mapathon Bratislava #13	2026-04-23
			Presentacion de initiative piloto: Capitulos de ONU Mapas	2026-04-23
	Richmond	Virtual	MapRVA Virtual Map & Yap with LaToya Gray-Sparks, VA DHR	2026-04-23
	Catania	Verso Coffice	Modifichiamo Wiki e OSM insieme!	2026-04-23
			UN Mappers Mappy Hour	2026-04-24
	Rapperswil-Jona	OST RJ See-Gebäude 6, Rapperswil (SG)	18. Mapathon & Mapping Party Rapperswil 2026	2026-04-24
		Pinneberg	Hamburger Mapping-Spaziergang (in Pinneberg)	2026-04-25
	Grad Zagreb	Sveučilište Algebra Bernays, Gradišćanska ulica 24	State of the Map Croatia (DORS/CLUC 2026)	2026-04-25
	Mumbai		OSM Mumbai Mapping Party No.9 (Central Line)	2026-04-25
			B of A – EC AM’s Mapathon -Global Service Month	2026-04-27
			Missing Maps : Mapathon en ligne – CartONG [fr]	2026-04-27
	Brno	Kamenice 753/5, Brno, Kamenice 753/5, Brno	Dubnový Missing Maps mapathon na Ústavu botaniky a zoologie	2026-04-27
	Stadtgebiet Bremen	Online und im Hackerspace Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2026-04-27
	Kiel	Mango’s, Kiel	Kieler Mapper*innentreffen	2026-04-28
	Wien	Schlupfwinkel (Kleine Neugasse 10, 1040 Wien)	78. Wiener OSM-Stammtisch	2026-04-28
	Berlin	Online	OSM-Verkehrswende #74	2026-04-28
	Hannover	Kuriosum	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover	2026-04-29
	Düsseldorf	Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2026	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)	2026-04-29
	Essen	Linuxhotel Essen	FOSSGIS-OSM-Communitytreffen im Linuxhotel	2026-04-30 – 2026-05-03
	Stuttgart	Großraum Stuttgart	MA1PING	2026-05-01
	Augsburg	Augsburger Linux-Infotag 2026	Workshop: JOSM – Java OpenStreetMap Editor – Eine Einführung	2026-05-02
		Sovigliana-Vinci	Mappando si Vinci! – 2 Maggio 2026	2026-05-02 – 2026-06-02
	Braunschweig	Stratum 0	Braunschweiger Mappertreffen im Stratum 0 Hackerspace	2026-05-02
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India – Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-05-02

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by HeiGIT, Mateusz Konieczny, MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, Raquel IVIDES DATA, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, jcr83, mcliquid.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

Over the years I have contributed a lot to many projects. My efforts have to have a purpose otherwise I lose my motivation. It has to have utility, it is what I dream about, it is what I strive for.

Would it not be great when we knew what our community dreams about, what they aim to achieve and as importantly how these dreams might grow into a reality or have grown into realities. Would it not be great when the Wikimedia Foundation builds on what is already there and grows our public, our relevance? It could start with a survey.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Wiki Loves Monuments has the pleasure to present the winning photos of the international finale of the contest 2025! The jury completed its work in March 2026, and the winners were announced on April 17 and 18, the International Museum Day.

In 2025 almost 228,000 images have been contributed by about 4,000 photographers in 56 national contests. Up to ten pictures from each of these competitions were nominated to the international finale. For a complete overview of all nominees, winners and runners-up, please take a look at the Winners page on Wikimedia Commons!

A huge thank-you goes out from the international coordination team to the international jury, the national juries and national organizers, and of course to all the photographers that submitted their amazing photos that can now be used on Wikipedia and its sister projects, and everyone that helped make this competition possible!

Teaching with Wikipedia for the first time can be a daunting prospect. Adopting any new pedagogical endeavor takes time, planning, and careful thought, and the Wikipedia assignment has the added complexity of a public-facing project. Wiki Education regularly turns to its incredible returning faculty to provide firsthand advice to new faculty considering running a Wikipedia assignment, but often these individuals have been teaching with Wikipedia for many years. Their experience and expertise are invaluable to our program, but their long tenure with the program means that they may not quite remember what it was like to do the project for the first time. 

And that’s why in March, we hosted a Speaker Series webinar to feature faculty who taught with Wikipedia for the first time in the fall term, giving us the opportunity to capture and share their firsthand perspectives while their experiences were fresh.

Several of our panelists explained that they decided to adopt the Wikipedia assignment because of its far-reaching impact. As Jennifer Bernstein of Texas Tech University put it, “Microsoft Word is where ideas go to die.” Unlike a traditional writing assignment, student contributions to Wikipedia have the potential to be read by millions and more than that, their work lives on beyond the class.

We often refer to the Wikipedia assignment as an open pedagogical resource. This isn’t simply because students are engaging in the construction of openly accessible knowledge, but because the Wikipedia editing community itself takes on a pedagogical role. While speaking about the Wikipedia assignment and AI, Allison Marsh of the University of South Carolina remarked that when her students get feedback from the Wikipedia community, the lessons she’s trying to impart hit home in a way that she alone cannot achieve. There’s an extra layer of accountability baked into the Wikipedia assignment that both motivates students and reinforces learning outcomes.

While the public-facing nature of the project serves to inspire many students, it can also engender anxiety, something several faculty on the panel had to grapple with as they introduced the project to their students. 

To address any nerves, Rodrigo Pedroza Llinas of Kenyon College assured his students that this was the first time he was learning to edit Wikipedia as well, and that they would all learn together. In fact, this is a common refrain among faculty — that they learn alongside their students, creating an atmosphere of collegiality and mentorship in their class. 

While some students may feel anxious about contributing to Wikipedia, Dr. Bernstein offered a different perspective. 

“One thing that really attracted me was that it was an inspiration,” said Bernstein. “It was a positive story that I could tell students. I feel that students feel like they’re drowning in information, information inaccuracy, they’re barraged by AI, anxiety, and searching for truth. In this assignment, they’re interacting in a safe, supportive, collaborative space that through working together, we make information better rather than worse.”

In an increasingly unstable information landscape, Wikipedia may offer students solid footing and reassurance that they can play a positive role in crafting and sharing knowledge.

The panelists readily acknowledged the challenges of teaching with Wikipedia for the first time, but remarked on how well-supported they were by Wiki Education. “The dashboard has this great little button that says ‘Get Help’,” explained Marsh. “If you hit that button, someone from Wiki Education’s staff will get back to you amazingly quickly to answer your questions.” 

In addition to Wiki Education’s support, Dr. Taneisha Means of Vassar College offered other strategies that proved helpful, such as multiple rounds of peer review and having her students meet with a social science librarian to help them as they began their research. Dr. Pedroza Llinas mentioned that he built in regularly scheduled time to meet with his students about the Wikipedia assignment to quickly head off any issues as they arose.

And the Wikipedia assignment not only benefits students, but has positive outcomes for faculty as well. 

“I would say for me as a person who studies democracy and representation and thinks about political inequality, I’m really excited always for my students to introduce me to new people, policies, and historical moments,” remarked Means. 

Faculty often comment on how grading the Wikipedia assignment is more enjoyable and that they too learn new concepts and ideas as their students delve into their contributions.

If you’re thinking of running a Wikipedia assignment for the first time, consider Bernstein’s reflection: 

“It’s really well scaffolded, the Wiki Education team is incredible, and it’s really flexible,” said Bernstein. “It can be scaled to face-to-face, online, asynchronous, synchronous, and different learner levels. I would just say there’s a lot of ways and options to easily modify it using the interface that’s already there to serve your needs.”

Thank you again to our amazing March webinar panelists. We look forward to welcoming more faculty to the Wiki Education community next term!

Join our next Speaker Series webinar tomorrow, April 15!

Earth Day, Every Day: Preserving Biodiversity on Wikipedia
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern
Zoom Registration

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

02/04/2026-08/04/2026

Mapping

• Comments on the following proposal have been requested:
  • Deprecate railway=narrow_gauge
• The following proposals are up for a vote:
  • man_made=cable_landing_station, to standardise the mapping of submarine cable landing station locations in OpenStreetMap. The tag is intended to more accurately help map this important infrastructure for international data connections (voting until 14 April 2026).
  • aerodrome:classification=*, to classify aerodromes more precisely according to their use and significance (e.g. international, regional, or local) (voting until 16 April 2026).

Community

• SeverinGeo, one of the French editors on weeklyOSM, has started a subjective review of weeklyOSM on Mastodon threads in French, English, and Portuguese, highlighting relevant information or extending articles with commentary.
• Pieter Vander Vennet provided an overview of the reviews made using MapComplete (2026 edition). Most reviews are located in Europe and focus on categories such as food, shops, and leisure activities.
• Engelbert Modo published , on LinkedIn, about a new initiative titled ‘CityMAPPER Externship 2026’, which aims to develop local capacity on mapping with OpenStreetMap and using open data, with initial focus on urban mapping in Cameroon. This initiative is a pilot project of the UN Mappers, a programme of the United Nations Global Service Centre, and has the sponsorship of the companies IVIDES DATA and TomTom, and the NGOs Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, GeOsm Family, and Geospatial Girls and Kids. You can read a prospectus of the UN Mappers Chapters Programme, the umbrella of the local initiatives.
• JDL09Organic, in a diary entry, presented a collection of Android apps for mobile mapping, including StreetComplete, Every Door, and MapComplete. The post provides a practical overview of their use cases and differences for efficient mapping on the go.
• juminet provided an overview of mapping photovoltaic installations in Wallonia and explains the correct usage of tags such as power=plant and power=generator. The analysis identifies several thousand mapped installations while highlighting gaps, especially in smaller setups.
• mbuege shared his experience capturing 360° imagery for Panoramax and has created a wiki page with tips on equipment and workflows. The guide is intended to be expanded and improved collaboratively by the community.
• watson reported ► on the discovery of a previously unmapped island in the Weddell Sea, which is now being discussed and mapped in OpenStreetMap. The community is debating the correct representation and positioning, as the feature is gradually added to maps and datasets.

Events

• Around 100 students at Brigham Young University took part in a mapathon to contribute OpenStreetMap data for humanitarian purposes. During the event, more than 13,000 features were mapped, mainly in regions such as South Africa and Myanmar.
• The organisers of State of the Map 2026 in Paris have opened their call for presentations, workshops, and panels, with a submission deadline of 27 April 2026. Contributions are invited across topics such as mapping, software development, community, and data analysis.
• Manuel is offering ► a workshop on the JOSM editor at the Augsburg Linux Days 2026 on Saturday 2 May, which will teach beginner and advanced users how to edit OpenStreetMap data. While using practical examples and exercises, the participants will learn how to work efficiently and error-free with the editor.

OSM research

• HeiGIT and the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy have investigated how OSM data quality affects routing outcomes. Thirty city-to-city routes were computed across several countries and benchmarked against Google Maps, Bing, Apple Maps, and Graphhopper using two criteria: distance and travel time.

Maps

• ^[1] L_J_R presented, via their OSM user diary, Strado, a web map that scores neighbourhoods across 50 European cities using OpenStreetMap data. Based on around 78 million POIs, it uses an H3 grid to analyse liveability and activity. There is also a city dashboard where you can browse all cities with their neighbourhood rankings.
• Frederik Ramm reported that Geofabrik now provides GeoPackage files alongside shapefiles, combining multiple layers into a single file. The datasets have also been expanded with new content such as administrative boundaries, protected areas, and additional POIs previously only available in paid datasets.
• Users can explore the application built using python-maps-vis that visualises river basins and watersheds across North and South America on an interactive map.

OSM in action

• Carlos Carrasco, the developer behind NIMBY Rails, a game with a railway design simulator that allows users to plan and build railway networks on real-world geography, has announced a shift away from the proprietary file format in favour of open standards, specifically Protomaps PMTiles and MapLibre MLT. The change is intended to make it easier for players to generate their own in-game map files.
• The OSRM project noticed that both OSRM and the OpenStreetMap project are properly credited in the Tesla Model Y owner’s manual.

Open Data

• HeiGIT introduced OpenAccessLens, a platform analysing global accessibility to healthcare and education based on OpenStreetMap and openrouteservice. The open dataset is intended to support research, humanitarian work, and policy-making.

Software

• Craig announced that Wandrer, an OpenStreetMap-data-based exploration game, now has ‘100% routing’ tools which lets you create in one go a route covering every road in an area.
• Tobias Knerr introduced, on the OSM Community forum, the OSM2World Object Viewer, a viewer that allows inspection of individual OSM objects in 3D, such as buildings, highways, waterslides, German traffic signs, and more than 200 other types of OSM objects. It fully supports Simple 3D Buildings, fetches up-to-date data on demand, and even enables local tag edits with instant visual feedback.
• The project OpenCourseMaps has introduced a web-based editor designed specifically for mapping golf courses in OpenStreetMap, thus reducing the complexity of doing this in a general purpose editor. It aims to engage golfers in detailed mapping of features such as fairways, greens, and bunkers while ensuring correct OSM tagging and geometry. The YouTube video explains how to map with the editor.
• Michael Reichert presented Wamy (an acronym for ‘Where are my ways’), a prototype of a web map which reconstructs and maps the ways deleted from OpenStreetMap in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It displays geometries of ways removed since 12 September 2012 (when OpenStreetMap changed its licence to the Open Data Commons Open Database Licence). It is helping to reveal changes in the dataset and potential conflicts around path usage. You can read more in the ‘About’ section.

Programming

• Sander de Snaijer presented ‘Map Gesture Controls’, browser-native hand gesture controls for OpenLayers, powered by MediaPipe and without a backend. A JavaScript library enables gesture-based interactions for web maps and the project enhances map usability with more intuitive controls, especially for touch and trackpad input. The source is available from the GitHub project map-gesture-controls, under a MIT licence.
• Marcos Dione described, in his OSM user diary, a small Python 3 script that scans a local osm2pgsql database for rare and likely wrong tag values and opens the affected objects in the editor for manual review. The approach deliberately targets the long tail of uncommon errors, so corrections can be made directly and in a controlled way. The errors include typos, street names instead of type, and some others.
• Ralph Straumann described on Spatialists – geospatial news, a demo workflow by Riccardo Klinger, which converts OpenStreetMap street network data into vector tiles using GDAL/OGR and integrates them into ArcGIS Enterprise. The pipeline runs on Kubernetes in the ArcGIS Notebook Server. You can read the tutorial on LinkedIn.
• The new iD tagging schema release v6.16.0 includes 34 new icons, 4 new presets (shop=piercing, amenity=kitchen, natural=arete, advertising=sign), new matching fields in various presets, fixes of bad text, avoidance of iD issues, and more.
• Tom Hodson outlined his experience of compiling and running a local copy of the Overpass API on a Mac.

Releases

• Kevin Ratzel introduced Map2Go, a new OpenStreetMap editor for iOS, designed to simplify on-site data collection through suggestions and favourites. The app is currently in early beta and available for testing via TestFlight.
• The OSM-based web map Cartes.app is now available in English (in addition to the original French version), as announced by maelito2000 in the OSM Community forum. Further translations are planned, while current performance issues are caused by the overloaded Overpass instances.
• The DBeaver Community Release 26.0.2 has fixed the ‘access blocked’ error in Spatial Viewer when loading OpenStreetMap tiles and provided other improvements. It is now using a local web server and your firewall might ask you to accept the connection to this server. DBeaver is a free, open-source database management tool which connects to PostgreSQL/PostGIS and other geospatial (and non-geospatial) databases, including MariaDB, DuckDB, MySQL, and SQL Server.
• Zeke Farwell announced that the josm-strava-heatmap version 6 updates the extension to work with Strava’s current heatmap site and cookie requirements for imagery access. Unfortunately this means support for iD editor had to be removed, but you can use the julcnx/strava-heatmap-extension instead, which was designed to be used with iD.
• Rphyrin announced the release of Altilunium LocationPad v26.4.6, introducing several features aimed at addressing personal pain points encountered in the past. This lightweight web app has its focus on mapping, labelling, and revisiting meaningful places on an OpenStreetMap-based map. Designed for quick place logging, personal mapping, and spatial note-taking without accounts. The source is available on GitHub.
• Tracestrack has introduced Tracesmap, a new iOS app for recording and uploading GNSS traces to OpenStreetMap. The app supports multiple map styles and aims to contribute to improving OSM data quality.
• Pablo Brasero reported on the OSM Community forum (in posts [1] and [2]) about the multiple updates to the OpenStreetMap.org website made in March 2026, including UI refinements, better small-screen layouts, and upgrade of iD to version 2.39.5. They have also introduced anti-abuse measures such as Cloudflare Turnstile on sign up and laid groundwork for a future notification system.
• Zkir released version 2.0 of their UrbanEye3D, a JOSM plugin, which significantly improves 3D rendering of OSM data directly within the editor. New features include a 2D ground layer, tree visualisation, and improved background processing for large datasets.

Did you know that …

• … there is a special offer for AI companies: in exchange for a modest donation to the OpenStreetMap project, the donor company will receive a direct download link to OSM data in a machine-friendly format. For a larger donation, the OpenStreetMap Ops Team will provide the full history data via a fresh weekly torrent download, under the ODbL licence.

OSM in the media

• Arshak Ahamed wrote about how the delivery company they work for in Oman has replaced Google Maps with OSM-based services, in order to stop paying $8,000 a month.
• In a blog post, PeopleForBikes described how mapathons help update bicycle infrastructure in OpenStreetMap and improve the accuracy of their City Ratings. Around 60 participants from North America have learned how to use iD and JOSM to map bike lanes, speed limits, and key destinations.

Other “geo” things

• Jet Lag: The Game is a travel competition video series by Wendover Productions channel. Every season is built around a game format that is tailored to its filming location, while taking into account regional geography and available modes of transportation. The challenges vary widely, including tasks such as claiming territories across countries or continents, circumnavigating the globe by air, playing large-scale tag, racing between a country’s northernmost and southernmost points, and staging cross-country games of hide-and-seek, among others.
• Jake Godin reported that the access to open source visuals of the current Iran conflict, which has spread to many parts of the Middle East, continues to be sporadic. In past conflicts satellite imagery has provided a vital overview of potential damage to infrastructure, but nowadays imagery from commercial providers is becoming increasingly restricted and expensive. After the war in Gaza (began in 2023), Bellingcat introduced a free tool authored by University College London lecturer and Bellingcat contributor, Ollie Ballinger, that was able to estimate the number of damaged buildings in a given area. Bellingcat is now introducing an updated version of the open source tool, the Iran Conflict Damage Proxy Map, focused on destruction in Iran and the wider Gulf region, which can be freely accessed.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
	Berlin	Wikimedia e.V. Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24,10963 Berlin	OSM Hackweekend Berlin-Brandenburg 04/2026	2026-04-11 – 2026-04-12
		Armadale Park Cafe	Social Mapping Sunday: Armadale Train Station	2026-04-12
	Milano		Editathon e mapathon alla Milano Marathon 2026	2026-04-12
	Antwerpen		Camera’s in kaart brengen	2026-04-12
	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-04-12
	Meerut	Haldiram’s, Garh Road, Meerut	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.28 (Meerut)	2026-04-12
			Missing Maps : Mapathon en ligne – CartONG [fr]	2026-04-13
	Grenoble	La Turbine	Atelier d’avril 2026 du groupe local de Grenoble	2026-04-13
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #87	2026-04-13
	Salt Lake City	Woodbine Food Hall	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night	2026-04-14
		Online	Mappy Hour OSM España	2026-04-14
	München	Echardinger Einkehr	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-04-14
	Hamburg	Online (Link s. Wiki)	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-04-14
		Oloron Sainte Marie	Une cartopartie dédiée à la mobilité durable dans les Montagnes Béarnaises	2026-04-15
		Oloron-Sainte-Marie – La Friche	Cartopartie à Oloron-Sainte-Marie – Projet SYSTOUR	2026-04-15
		MJC de Vienne	Rencontre des contributeurs de Vienne (38)	2026-04-15
			Online Mapathon von ÄRZTE OHNE GRENZEN	2026-04-15
	Karlsruhe	Chiang Mai	Stammtisch Karlsruhe	2026-04-15
	Freiburg im Breisgau	CCCFR, Adlerstr. 12a, Freiburg (Grethergelände)	OSM-Treffen Freiburg/Brsg.	2026-04-16
			OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting	2026-04-17
	Potsdam	Kellermann	Potsdamer Mappertreffen	2026-04-17
		Golem, Avane, Empoli	Mapping Day ad Empoli	2026-04-18
		Dijital Bilgi Derneği	OSM-TR Meet-Up – OSM League Pit-Stop	2026-04-18
	Chennai Corporation		Mapping Party @ Chennai	2026-04-19
	Liège	ULiège-RISE	Understanding the OpenStreetMap ecosystem	2026-04-20
			Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]	2026-04-21
	Lyon	Tubà	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon	2026-04-21
	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-04-21
	Derby	The Brunswick, Railway Terrace, Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up	2026-04-21
	Bonn	Dotty’s	199. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-04-21
	City of London	The Globe pub, Moorgate	London pub meet-up	2026-04-21
		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-04-21
	Richmond	Richmond, VA USA	Capital One TPM Summit Global Mapathon	2026-04-23
	Bratislava	Prírodovedecká fakulta UK Bratislava	Missing Maps mapathon Bratislava #13	2026-04-23
	Richmond	Virtual	MapRVA Virtual Map & Yap with LaToya Gray-Sparks, VA DHR	2026-04-23
	Tours	Étape 84	Rencontre locale Touraine	2026-04-23
	Catania	Verso Coffice	Modifichiamo Wiki e OSM insieme!	2026-04-23
	Rapperswil-Jona	OST RJ See-Gebäude 6, Rapperswil (SG)	18. Mapathon & Mapping Party Rapperswil 2026	2026-04-24
		Pinneberg	Hamburger Mapping-Spaziergang (in Pinneberg)	2026-04-25
	Mumbai		OSM Mumbai Mapping Party No.9 (Central Line)	2026-04-25
			B of A – EC AM’s Mapathon -Global Service Month	2026-04-27
	Brno	Kamenice 753/5, Brno, Kamenice 753/5, Brno	Dubnový Missing Maps mapathon na Ústavu botaniky a zoologie	2026-04-27
			Missing Maps : Mapathon en ligne – CartONG [fr]	2026-04-27

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by MatthiasMatthias, Raquel IVIDES DATA, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, izen57, mcliquid, s8321414.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

On 2 April 2026, a drone attack struck the Al-Jabalain hospital in White Nile state, Sudan. Seven medical staff were killed. It is shocking and at the time I predicted that it would not be covered in the news. It did not. 

What to do? I read the MSF website and learned about a disease called Noma. In 2023 noma was added to the World Health Organization's list of neglected tropical diseases. I am in the process of deepening the information about Noma in Wikidata. It involves tagging papers with "noma", attributing papers to people. Finding new papers and adding them as well. For a recent "systematic scoping review" I am adding all the citations, adding many more papers relevant to the subject. It results in an informative Scholia on the subject. 

When the news is this bad, doing something positive is a way to cope.

Thanks,

       GerardM