Wikidata & Wikibase – the mainstays of an open internet

Wikidata is an impressively large collection of free knowledge data. Launched in 2012, it now consists of over 120 million structured items that are both human- and machine-readable. It’s not just Wikipedia that uses its data to automatically update information such as population figures or dates of birth; Wikidata also forms the backbone of numerous digital applications both inside and outside the Wikimedia world, from well-known voice assistants through platforms like Govdirectory to travel apps and games like Wikitrivia.

Wikidata is a mainstay of the open and transparent internet. Its importance was recognized with a special award in October 2025: The Digital Public Goods Alliance — an initiative supported by the United Nations — has recognized Wikidata as a digital public good. Only a few months previous, Wikipedia had been awarded the same distinction.

Worldwide, over 24,000 volunteers work to verify, update and expand Wikidata’s store of knowledge. In 2025, together with the development teams at Wikimedia, these volunteers have made significant contributions to shaping an internet that is more equitable, transparent and humane.

While tech companies have been training AI systems on Wikidata’s open data for years, at Wikimedia Deutschland we’ve concentrated on funding and volunteer support for open and fair AI solutions.

A central component of this work is the Wikidata Embedding project, launched in 2024. Its goal is to make it easier, especially for open-source developers, to access Wikidata’s data and thus promote the development of innovative AI-based applications useful to the public. As part of the project, in the fall of 2025 we released a vector database, which processes Wikidata’s high-quality data and makes it directly usable in developing generative-AI applications. Above all this benefits smaller development teams and open-source initiatives, for whom such processing was often unaffordable in the past.

In the first phase of the Embedding Project, approximately 23 million items from Wikidata were made available via the new vector database, with more to follow. Interest in the service is already high: since its launch, the vector database has seen between 100,000 and 150,000 accesses per month.

At Wikimedia Deutschland, we have set ourselves the goal of enabling even more people to use and contribute to projects like Wikipedia and Wikidata. To that end, we intend to create easier, more equitable and accessible methods of connection and access

One example of new approaches to international cooperation is the Software Collaboration for Wikidata project, sponsored by the Arcadia Fund through June 2025. As part of this collaboration, teams of developers from Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Ghana and Brazil worked on developing practical tools for using the free knowledge repository with a particular emphasis on smaller language editions. Among other things, this led to the creation of the new Broomstick tool which helps editors to identify and fix issues in Wikidata.

Another product of the Software Collaboration for Wikidata was the Wiki Mentor Africa project. This series of trainings was launched by a team from Nigeria that offered workshops and hackathons in various African countries. Through the program, many people were empowered to work with Wikidata and share their knowledge on the internet in their own language.

Each year, many events take place that serve to demonstrate the versatility of Wikidata’s data, such as Wikidata’s Data Reuse Days and the Wikidata and Sister Projects event. Another important gathering for the international Wikidata community is WikidataCon, where volunteers, developers, researchers and organizations who work with Wikidata gather annually to exchange ideas.

In 2025, Wikimedia Deutschland also focused on the expansion of the Wikibase ecosystem. Wikibase is the software that underlies Wikidata. A diverse, decentralized network of data entities is emerging here. This network will allow tech communities, research groups, and libraries, among others, to operate their own knowledge bases along the lines of Wikidata –  instances of Wikibase – to maintain collections of specialized data independently.

One of many examples is a project by a group in Peru that uses Wikibase to document the indigenous Quechua language family and build a freely accessible dictionary. The National Library of Nigeria also uses Wikibase to make data on Nigerian editors more accessible, strengthening connections within Nigeria’s knowledge landscape.

All these developments demonstrate the importance of free and open knowledge projects like Wikidata and Wikibase. Not only is the amount of accessible data continuously growing, but more and more people and initiatives are joining in on these projects. Going forward, Wikimedia Deutschland will continue providing support for these developments.