WikiConference In Kochi Explores How Tech Can Remain Inclusive
The fourth edition of WikiConference India 2026 was held in Kochi from September 4 to 6 and brought together over 220 Wikimedia project volunteers, thought leaders, partners, and advocates of free and open knowledge from across India and South Asia
Kochi: The fourth edition of the WikiConference India 2026 (WCI 2026), the regional conference for volunteer contributors of Wikimedia projects, which ended on September 6, explored how it could remain inclusive, resilient and forward-looking amid rapid technological and social change.
The WikiConference brought together Wikimedia contributors, volunteers, researchers, educators, developers, affiliates, institutional partners and supporters of free and open knowledge to learn, collaborate and strengthen the Wikimedia ecosystem in India and South Asia, a release by WCI has said.
The fourth edition of WikiConference India 2026 was held in Kochi from September 4 to 6 and brought together over 220 Wikimedia project volunteers, thought leaders, partners, and advocates of free and open knowledge from across India and South Asia.
This included nearly 100 participants from India and 25 participants from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan who received scholarships to participate in the regional conference.
At the centre of the conference was the role of the Wikimedia movement: the volunteer communities that create, improve and share knowledge on global Wikimedia projects, the release said.
Their contributions have become even more vital in todayʼs age of Artificial Intelligence as artificial intelligence and large language models continue to train on human-created, multilingual knowledge from Wikimedia projects, it said.
"Hosting WikiConference India in Kochi has shown how local contributions can create a wider impact. From documenting places and cultural heritage to strengthening knowledge in regional languages, every contribution adds to global commons of freely available knowledge," Jinoy Tom Jacob, Co-Lead of the WCI 2026 organising team and member of the Kerala Wikimedia User Group, said.
The conference provided a platform for communities working across regional Wikimedia projects to share ideas, build collaborations and discuss the future of open knowledge, the release said.
Wikipedia is available in more than 25 Indian languages and includes nearly all of the 22 scheduled languages of India, which is the largest number of languages represented from one country on the online encyclopedia, it said.
India contributes the fifth-highest number of views to Wikipedia in the world, with about 600 million page views per month.
