Wikipedia Statistics By Growth And Activity (2026)

Introduction

Wikipedia Statistics: Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can read or edit. People from around the world contribute to it, keeping it alive and up to date. It has millions of articles in hundreds of languages, covering almost every topic you can think of. The English version alone contains millions of pages, whereas all languages together total tens of millions of pages.

Every day, thousands of volunteers update and add information to ensure accuracy. Although anyone can make changes, Wikipedia adheres to clear rules to ensure neutrality and reliability. With millions of daily visitors, it has become one of the most widely used and trusted online sources of knowledge.

Editor’s Choice

• For the 2025-2026 fiscal year, the Wikimedia Foundation approved an annual budget targeting total revenue of approximately USD 207.5 million.
• As of February 2026, the English Wikipedia contains about 7,130,933 articles.
• In addition, 171 active projects are Wiktionaries, which account for about 20.4% of the active project base.
• As of 2025, the English Wikipedia contains about 2.4 million categories used to organise articles by topic.
• As of January 3, 2026, the English edition is the most common Wikipedia language, accounting for 10.7% of all articles, with an estimated 7.1 million articles.
• In December 2025, Wikipedia.org recorded about 4.25 billion visits.
• Most desktop users reached Wikipedia.org via Google.com, which accounted for 70.57% of total traffic, followed by direct visits at 16.11%.
• Approximately 24.06% of Wikipedia’s visitors come from the United States, representing roughly 1.02 billion visits per month. Most Americans use mobile phones (73.45%), while 26.55% prefer desktops.
• As of February 3, 2026, the Wikipedia Main Page, categorised as a general article, was the most popular page, with 7,136,886 views.

Financial Report of The Wikimedia Foundation

• According to diff.wikimedia.org, total revenue for the fiscal year ending 30 June 2025 was approximately USD 208.6 million.
• Of this revenue, about USD 189.5 million came directly from donations and contributions from individuals, foundations, and other supporters.
• Banner fundraising accounted for approximately 30% of total revenue, email-based giving for about 15%, and recurring gifts (monthly donors) for 21% of total donations.
• Wikimedia Enterprise (a paid service for commercial use of Wikipedia data) generated approximately USD 8.3 million (about 4% of total revenue) and became profitable for the first time.
• The Wikimedia Foundation further stated that, for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, it approved an annual budget targeting total revenue of approximately USD 207.5 million.

Wikipedia Statistics By Growth And Activity

• Wikimedia projects grow rapidly, with more than 18 edits per second by editors from around the world.
• In 2025, these projects received almost 10,000 page views every second.
• Wikipedia is available in more than 300 languages and supported by hundreds of related sister projects.
• The English Wikipedia alone receives more than 2 edits and more than 4,000 page views per second.
• As of February 2026, the English Wikipedia contains about 7,130,933 articles.
• On average, around 500 new articles are added each day.
• Editors add about 11 MB of text to articles every day, which equals roughly 4 GB of new content per year.
• Since the project started, more than 11.9 million users have edited the English Wikipedia at least once.
• Approximately 3.6 million users have made more than 5 edits, representing approximately 30.25% of all editors.
• In the most recent month, around 37,750 users were active contributors.

Wikimedia Project Size And Distribution

• As of 2025, Wikimedia operates 1,032 projects, of which 838 are active, indicating that approximately 81.2% of all projects are currently in use.
• Among the active projects, 338 are Wikipedia editions, representing approximately 40.3% of all active Wikimedia projects.
• In addition, 171 active projects are Wiktionaries, which account for about 20.4% of the active project base.
• The largest Wikimedia projects by content size are Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.
• Wikimedia Commons is the largest project, hosting approximately 133,627,646 media files.
• Wikidata is the second-largest project, containing around 120,307,835 structured data items.
• The English-language Wikipedia is the largest edition of Wikipedia, with approximately 7,130,933 articles.
• It is followed by the Cebuano Wikipedia, which has approximately 6,115,838 articles.
• The German Wikipedia ranks third, with around 3,093,552 articles.
• Most articles on the Cebuano Wikipedia are created using automated bots rather than human editors.
• Other Wikimedia projects, which are less widely known but still important, include Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, and Wikispecies.

Overview of Wikimedia Projects

Growth And Scale of The English Wikipedia

• According to Wikipedia, approximately 11.9 million users have contributed edits.
• The total text content of all English Wikipedia articles is about 58 GB.
• The Kiwix offline version, which includes images and uses compression, is approximately 100 GB.
• This means the offline version is approximately 172% of the pure-text size.
• As of November 2025, the longest article is titled “2025 in women’s road cycling,” with 716,528 bytes.
• The most-edited article is Lithe st of WWE personnel, with over 58,000 edits.
• Some pages exceed 3 MB and have more than 2 million edits, but these pages are primarily for Wikipedia maintenance rather than general reading.
• On average, about 200,000 new articles have been published each year.
• Article creation peaked in 2006, with more than 584,000 new articles created that year.
• The current annual creation rate is approximately 34% of the 2006 peak.
• As of 2025, the English Wikipedia contains about 2.4 million categories used to organise articles by topic.
• The article with the most categories is the List of ISO 639-2 codes, which comprises 354 categories.
• The Wikimedia media repository holds 133,627,646 free-to-use media files, including images, audio, and video.
• The total size of these media files is approximately 585 TB, indicating substantial storage requirements for the project.
• The English Wikipedia allows users to upload files directly to the site, but these files must follow strict non-free content rules.
• Moreover, it hosts 959,569 locally uploaded files, which is less than 1 % of all media files available across Wikimedia platforms.
• Additionally, about 8.1 million talk pages are used by editors to discuss article content and improvements.
• The site also maintains 11.2 million redirect pages.

The Most Common Wikipedia Languages (January 3, 2026)

Wikipedia’s Website Traffic And Visitor Engagement

(Source: semrush.com)

• In December 2025, Wikipedia.org recorded about 4.25 billion visits.
• Compared with November, total visits in December declined by 3.83%, to 4.42 billion, and in October to 4.86 billion.
• In December, users averaged 3.48 pages per visit.
• Meanwhile, the average visit duration was 9 minutes and 21 seconds.
• During the same period, the bounce rate for wikipedia.org was 58.02%.
• The majority of users access the site via mobile devices (76.32% of total traffic), while desktop computers account for the remaining 23.68%.

By Top Sources and Destinations

• In December 2025, most desktop users reached Wikipedia.org via Google.com, which accounted for 70.57% of total traffic, followed by direct visits at 16.11%.
• Smaller shares came from Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Brave, with mixed growth trends.
• After leaving Wikipedia.org, users mainly visited Wikimedia.org (21.86%) and Google.com (8.71%), while engagement with YouTube (3.22%) and IMDb (1.86%) increased, and traffic to Archive.org (1.10%) declined.

By Country

(Source: semrush.com)

• As of December 2025, approximately 24.06% of Wikipedia’s visitors come from the United States, corresponding to roughly 1.02 billion visits per month. Most Americans use mobile phones (73.45%), while 26.55% prefer desktops.
• Japan accounted for 9.46% of the site’s traffic, with aapproximately402.6 million monthly visits. The majority of Japanese users access Wikipedia via mobile devices (79.87%), whereas only 20.13% use desktops.
• In Germany, Wikipedia accounted for 5.87% of total traffic, with approximately 249.65 million visits per month. Most Germans use mobile devices (77.54%), whereas 22.46% use desktops.
• The United Kingdom accounted for 4.40% of total traffic, representing approximately 187.24 million visits per month. 70.41% of users access Wikipedia via mobile, and 29.59% use desktops.
• France accounted for 4.29% of Wikipedia traffic, totalling 182.41 million monthly visits. The majority of users browse on mobile devices (78.68%), whereas 21.32% use desktops.

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles (February 3, 2026)

User Participation Model On Wikipedia

• Wikipedia allows anyone to edit pages, create new articles, and suggest changes immediately, reflecting an open participation model with 100% public access to content contributions.
• Platform rules and content decisions are managed by the community through a balance of democratic discussion and structured leadership to handle disagreements effectively.
• Supported by a strong community of 125,000+ active editors, Wikipedia typically corrects errors within minutes, demonstrating high collaboration efficiency and rapid response.

Conclusion

Wikipedia is a large and important online encyclopedia used by people worldwide. It contains millions of articles, and volunteers from many countries work daily to add and update information. While it provides easy access to knowledge on many topics, it still faces challenges, including a shortage of active editors and gaps in some languages. Even so, Wikipedia continues to grow and remains a reliable source of information.

It helps millions of people quickly find accurate information and remains an important source of knowledge worldwide.

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