The Wikimedia Foundation’s Latest Transparency Report

Transparency is a core principle of the Wikimedia Foundation, the free knowledge projects we host, and the volunteers around the globe who contribute to them.

To honor that principle, twice a year, the Foundation releases a transparency report. The report provides an overview of the work the Foundation is doing to protect projects like Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, and support the volunteer communities who handle the majority of content requests.

Maintaining the quality of content across projects can at times stand in tension with requests from entities, companies, and individuals to modify information that does not align with their interests. In the few cases when the Foundation manages such requests, if there are no legal issues and the content complies with the policies and guidelines, the Foundation will not intervene in the community’s decision. Overall, we will prioritize freedom of expression, privacy, and access to knowledge for everyone. We also work to protect the community’s right to discuss, determine, and provide educational content on the projects.

The Foundation’s biannual transparency report provides an overview of the requests received during the reporting period, their countries of origin, the types of requests, and notable requests. It is important to note that content moderation on Wikimedia projects is decentralized and, thus, this report does not include volunteer content moderation. For example, the content moderation of each Wikipedia article is completely transparent and can be found on each article’s talk page.

Below are important statistics from the from the July – December 2025 reporting period:

• Takedown requests (including content alteration): From July to December 2025, we received 532 requests to alter or remove project content. One of these requests were Right to Erasure-based requests related to user accounts. When we receive such a request, we provide the user with information on the community-driven vanishing process.
• Copyright requests: Wikimedia volunteer communities work diligently to ensure that copyrighted material is not uploaded to the projects without an appropriate free license or exception, such as fair use. When we receive Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices asking us to remove allegedly infringing material, we conduct thorough investigations to make sure the claims are valid. During this reporting period, we received eleven DMCA requests and granted one. Some stories in the Transparency Report share more about the kinds of DMCA requests we received and how they were handled. With projects as large in scope as ours, the low number of DMCA requests we receive is due to the diligent work of community volunteers, who make sure that the content on the projects is correctly licensed.
• Requests for user information. The Wikimedia Foundation only grants requests for user data that comply with our requests for user information procedures and guidelines (which include a provision for emergency conditions). Moreover, the Foundation collects very little nonpublic user information as part of our commitment to user privacy. Any information we do collect is retained for a short amount of time. Of the 20 user data requests we received, two resulted in the disclosure of nonpublic user information.

You can read the full transparency report here.

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This transparency report reaffirms the Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment to the principles of transparency, privacy, and freedom of expression. It also represents the diligent work of Wikimedia volunteers, who build Wikimedia projects and the knowledge available on them. If you are interested in learning about the requests sent to the Foundation in greater depth, please access the comprehensive July to December 2025 transparency report. You can also see past reports by viewing previous blog posts.

The transparency report would not be possible without the contributions of Julianne Alberto, Aly Marino, Funkola Odeleye, Sara Campos, Laura Pulecio Duarte, Lance Greenberg, Shrutika Manivannan, Rachel Stallman, Brian Choo, Jim Buatti, Lukas Ruthes Goncalves, Mackenzie Rhine, and Noah Usman.