At the end of April, Wikimedia Community Ireland attended the Wikimedia Europe General Assembly in Prague. Over two days, affiliates from across Europe came together to vote on the WMEU strategic plan and annual report, take part in collaboration exercises and discussion groups, and connect with colleagues working on open knowledge projects in their own countries and language communities.
Group Picture at the Wikimedia Europe 2026 General Assembly in Prague (April 2026) image by Richard Sekerak (WMCZ), CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Voting and strategic planning
A central part of the General Assembly is the formal business of the network. This year, members voted on the 2025 annual report, the financial report, and the WMEU strategy. Seeing that process run transparently, with space for discussion and a clear voting procedure, was a useful point of reference for us as a member affiliate.
The strategic discussions that accompanied the formal votes covered how WMEU can support its member affiliates more effectively – on funding development, policy and advocacy capacity, and sharing resources and experience across the network. The overall direction of the 2026 plan reflects a focus on collaboration as a working method and on being realistic about what organisations with limited capacity can achieve.
Anna WMEU Opening the Session on Day 1
Discussion groups and collaboration
Much of the two days was structured around facilitated discussion groups and self-directed topic rounds, with strong facilitation throughout the weekend that kept sessions focused and inclusive. Groups worked through questions on funding strategy, network development, and how affiliates can share what they are learning with each other rather than developing solutions in isolation.
One discussion that was directly useful for WCI was on funding strategy – specifically, the value of starting from what your organisation needs and then identifying funding that enables existing plans, rather than building programmes around available calls.
Connecting with European colleagues
The GA brought together affiliates from a wide range of countries and language communities, and the time between sessions was as useful as the sessions themselves. We networked with colleagues from Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia Serbia, Wikimedia Portugal, Wiki Donne, and Basque-language Wikimedia partners, among others.
Several people we spoke to were familiar faces from Celtic Knot 2024, and a number of the projects being developed across Europe (on minority language content, educational outreach, and toolkit development) have direct overlap with what WCI is working on.
Hearing about the range and scale of work happening across European affiliates, and the different approaches being taken to shared challenges, was one of the most useful aspects of the weekend.
Future Labs with Wikimedia Deutschland
On Sunday, Wikimedia Deutschland facilitated a Futures Lab session structured around a simple progression: learn, think, do. The day opened with a keynote from Prof Josef Holy on how global trends (in attention, data, and platform design) are reshaping the information environment, and where Wikipedia sits within that. A panel followed, bringing together perspectives from computational linguistics, big data, UX design, journalism, and open knowledge policy on how people are finding and consuming information now, and what that means for organisations like ours.
Expert Panel discussion led by Lucy from WMUK
The afternoon moved into structured group work, using a shared template to identify challenges, develop hypotheses, and test potential responses before bringing findings to a full round table discussion. It was a well-designed format that generated useful thinking on questions WCI is already working through – particularly around how open knowledge communities can stay relevant, build resilience, and make the case for human-centred, verifiable information in an increasingly noisy environment.
What comes next
A separate post will cover WCI’s participation as a panelist at the PLURILINGMEDIA policy workshop in Galway the following week, where several of the same themes around minority language media and digital participation came up in a research and policy context.
We will publish updates on the work coming out of Prague as it develops.
