Wiki In Africa‘s 12th annual continental photo contest is underway — and dozens of Wikimedia community organisers across Africa are making it happen on the ground.
Wiki Loves Africa (WLA) is back! The much-loved Wikimedia Commons contest opened for entries on 1 March 2026, inviting photographers, filmmakers, audio artists, and visual storytellers from across Africa — and beyond — to document the continent’s rites and rituals for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. The contest runs until 30 April 2026, and, as it does every year, it is supported by a network of community organisers spanning more than 30 countries.
The 2026 theme — Rites & Rituals — is as expansive as it is intimate. It encompasses naming ceremonies and funerals, pilgrimages and morning routines, masquerades and coffee ceremonies. As the contest framing puts it, a ritual might be as intimate as braiding hair or as expansive as a harvest festival. What matters is that it connects past, present, and future — and that it is documented through the eyes of people who live it.
A Theme That Opens Doors
The theme for this edition was selected to reflect the full breadth of how African communities mark life’s transitions and rhythms. The scope includes rites of passage (birth and naming, coming-of-age, marriage, funerals), religious practices (prayer, pilgrimages, fasting, offerings), everyday cultural expressions (dance, masquerade, storytelling, communal cooking), civic acts (national days, flag-raising, military commemorations), and arts festivals that retain deep ritual significance.
Crucially, the theme is not limited to the ancient or ceremonial. Entries can be rooted in tradition, contemporary reinterpretation, or practices that are entirely new. The contest explicitly invites documentation of daily and household rituals — the gestures and habits that shape communal life but rarely make it into encyclopaedic coverage of Africa.
Detailed guidance on what to document, including illustrative keywords and sub-categories, is available on the WLA 2026 Theme page on Wikimedia Commons.
The Community Driving the Contest
Wiki Loves Africa is not simply a submission portal — it is a continental programme powered by local Wikimedia communities who organise events, run training sessions, conduct photowalks, and support new contributors in their own languages and contexts.
For 2026, over 30 Wikimedia communities across Africa have registered as organising partners on the Countries page on Wikimedia Commons. Their work represents the real engine of the contest.
A few examples of what is being organised on the ground:
Nigeria has one of the largest concentrations of participating Wikimedia communities in the 2026 contest, with 11 separate communities involved, bolstered by the presence of long-term Wiki Loves Africa organisers and micro-funders, Wikimedia UG Nigeria. Communities registered as organising partners include Wiki Niger Delta, Northern Nigeria Wikimedians, and Taraba State, Nigeria. Additional Nigeria-based groups include the collaborative efforts of selected Nigerian universities and community-led organisers in Jigawa State. The breadth of Nigerian participation reflects the country’s growing Wikimedia volunteer base and the particular richness of its ritual and cultural heritage as documentary subject matter.
Rwanda has organised a structured programme centred on encouraging women participants to engage with photography and with contributions to Wikimedia Commons. Their activities include office hours for youth, one-on-one training, an online training session, and a dedicated photowalk.
The Ugandan Wikimedia Community held a formal launch event on 14 March 2026, introducing the contest and the creation of Wikimedia Commons accounts. This will be followed by a period of photo hunts and media uploads through April, and a local jury process in May.
The Wikimedia Community User Group Congo (WMRCongo) is organising cultural events, photowalks, and training workshops to document Congolese ritual practices — traditional, religious, cultural, and civic — and address the lack of freely available visual documentation of Congolese culture on Wikimedia projects.
Beyond individual country programmes, community groups including Wikimedia Community User Group Burundi, Central African Republic Volunteer Group, Wiki Niger Delta, Northern Nigeria Wikimedians, LibyaCommunity, WikiZimbabwe Volunteer Group, Wikimedia Community User Group Gabon, and Taraba State, Nigeria, are just some of the communities participating in the 2026 edition.
From Amateur to Professional
One of the distinctive features of Wiki Loves Africa is its investment in building long-term skills within African creative and Wikimedia communities — not just running a competition.
For 2026, Wiki In Africa has produced a series of free online masterclasses and office hours in English, French, and Arabic to support both new and returning contributors. Topics this year include:
- Ethical storytelling — how to document rituals responsibly and with cultural sensitivity. Join us this Friday, 27 March.
- Sound journeys and audio documentation — a key focus given that audio is a full prize category in 2026, with a dedicated session led by Mohammed Kamal-Deen Fuseini.
- Photography and videography skills — covering composition, quality, and encyclopaedic value.
- Wikimedia Commons navigation — uploading, metadata, categories, and using images to improve Wikipedia articles.
Dates and registration links for upcoming sessions are maintained on the 2026 Organisers Hub on Meta-Wiki. Recordings of past masterclasses and webinars are openly accessible afterwards on the Wiki Loves Africa YouTube channel — a resource bank that grows with each year of the contest.
Prizes To Be Won
Wiki Loves Africa 2026 accepts photos, videos, audio files, and photo essays uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a free licence (CC-BY-SA). The contest is deliberately multi-modal, recognising that rituals are experienced through sound, sequence, and time — not just the single image. Wiki Loves Africa focuses on capturing real-life experiences, not fantasy – AI contributions will not make it into the final prize selection.
The prize categories reflect this breadth:
Photography Prizes:
- 1st Prize: USD 900
- 2nd Prize: USD 700
- 3rd Prize: USD 600
- Wilson Oluoha Prize: USD 1,000
- Photo Essay: USD 300
Media Prizes:
- Narrative Video: USD 900
- Reportage Video: USD 900
- Clip Video: USD 200
- Audio: USD 700
The Wilson Oluoha Prize honours the memory of a beloved colleague and advocate for local African Wikimedia communities. The Photo Essay category has an extended deadline to give Wikimedians time to compile visual narratives around specific topics using uploads from Wikimedia Commons. Rather than a single shot, a photo essay can follow a ritual as it unfolds — the preparation, the gathering, the key moments, and what comes after.
The winners of the main Photography and Media categories will be selected from all entries by three international juries comprising expert photographers, filmmakers, audiologists, and Commonists. The final winners will be announced at Wikimania Paris in July 2026. The Wilson Oluoha Prize and Photo Essay winners will be announced in an online live event in the 4th quarter of 2026.
Wiki Loves Africa Matters – here’s why
Since 2014, Wiki Loves Africa has collected over 146,698 entries from more than 12,854 contributors in up to 55 countries. The images entered have been viewed over 36.9 million times per month on Wikimedia projects and cumulatively over 2.4 billion times.
Yet the impetus for the contest remains as relevant now as it was at its founding: Africa is systematically underrepresented on global knowledge platforms. The continent’s cultures, traditions, and visual richness exist — but too little of it is freely available on Wikipedia. Wiki Loves Africa is one of the most sustained efforts to change that by putting cameras, skills, and community infrastructure in the hands of the people who live the stories they are documenting.
Join Wiki Loves Africa
Participants: Enter photographs, videos, or audio files by uploading directly to Wikimedia Commons via the contest portal. Entries must be submitted under a free licence and relate to the theme of Rites & Rituals in an African context. No AI-generated images are accepted.
Community organisers: Find local events, photowalks, workshops, and edit-a-thons listed on the Countries page. If your community is not yet listed and you want to organise local activities, resources and support are available on the Wiki Loves Africa Organisers Hub on Meta.
Everyone: Share the contest using #WikiLovesAfrica and tag @WikiLovesAfrica across social media platforms.
Wiki Loves Africa 2026 is organised by Wiki In Africa, the South Africa-based non-profit working across the continent to decolonise knowledge on the internet and facilitate open access to knowledge that reflects Africa’s cultures, peoples, and histories.
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