This page contains the roadmap for the Linked Open Data (LOD) ecosystem in 2026 (Wikidata, Wikibase Suite, Wikibase Cloud). Quarterly estimates will be added at the start of each quarter; currently only Q1 items are listed.
Strategic outcomes and Q1–Q4 activities
Stability, sustainability, and scalability of infrastructure has improved to ensure the long-term resilience and thriving of the Wikibase ecosystem
Support the Wikidata Platform team, community and reusers in moving to a new backend for the Wikidata Query Service (Q2)
Reduce the size of the recent changes tables on the clients by reducing the amount of changes from Wikidata (Q1 + Q2)
Work with an external partner to find possible improvements to Wikidata’s data storage (Q1 + Q2)
The distributed Wikibase ecosystem is more sustainable because of clear data governance policies, increased feature parity, and interoperability/smooth transitions across products
Agree on the solution to the workflows implementing the Wikibase Cloud hosting policy and plan the pilot phase of the process (Q1)
Put in place the new hosting policy for Wikibase Cloud (without enforcing it yet) and trial it with a few Wikibase Cloud instances (Q2)
Prepare the workflows for users to accept the new hosting policy and updated Terms of Use for Wikibase Cloud (Q2)
Allow Wikibase Cloud users to declare the license for their Wikibase in its footer as a step to compliance with the hosting policy (Q2)
Ensure that REST API and default language codes were correctly enabled on Wikibase Cloud as a result of the update to MW 1.43 that happened last quarter (Q1)
The communities of the Wikibase ecosystem continue to grow
We improve Wikibase-related communication via LinkedIn and the website to increase awareness for a wider audience and website traffic (Q1 + Q2)
We release two new blog posts that portray the work of the DHwiki group and the Flanders Arts Institute (Q2)
Prototype and test a new Wikibase discovery service (Q1 + Q2)
Wikimedia editors have better awareness, understanding, and tools to monitor and manage Wikidata’s impact on their projects
Support the infrastructural foundations for Wikidata use in other Wikimedia projects by further reducing the size of the recent changes tables in the database, to ensure that editors can rely on the Recent Changes and Watchlists of their wikis to help keep the content they care about in shape. (Q1 + Q2)
Support Wikidata use in other Wikimedia projects by reducing recent changes to database table size, ensuring editors can rely on their wikis’ Recent Changes and Watchlists pages to maintain content. (Q1 + Q2)
Movement or movement-adjacent partner groups outside Europe and North America have the resources and capacity to carry out technical initiatives that strengthen the Wikibase ecosystem communities and foster digital skills development
Look into further possibilities to provide resources to Movement or movement-adjacent partner groups (Q1)
Prepare and implement collaboration with partner organisation in Indonesia for tool development for data quality on Wikidata (Q2)
The ability to federate knowledge across instances has improved, creating a viable path for taking load off of Wikidata
Ontology federation: making it possible to use Wikidata’s Items as values in statements on other Wikibase instances (demo session) and enable a public test version for the community (Q1)
Complete first version of federation feature and ship to self-hosted Wikibase instances (Q2)
Agree on a way to reduce the number of non-operational endpoints on the Wikidata Query Service allowlist (Q1) + actually reduced the number from 30% to 14% (Q2)
Continue reducing the number of non-operational endpoints on the Wikidata Query Service allowlist; agree on the way of automating it (Q2)
Users holding and contributing marginalized knowledge find the Wikibase LOD ecosystem (Wikidata, Wikibase Suite, and Wikibase Cloud) attractive for their use cases
Implement a way for Wikibase Cloud users to indicate that their instance contributes to knowledge equity (Q1)
Publish 2 more showcases of holders of marginalized knowledge using Wikibase Cloud for their use cases (Q1)
Conduct internal workshop, begin continuous interviewing, identify and prioritize research needs towards understanding and furthering knowledge equity (Q1)
We have made Wikibase self-hosting operations more accessible, robust and easier to manage, fostering project success
Through user tests we have identified issues and barriers along the Wikibase Suite installation process. We will address them in Q1: Installation guide, domain setup and environment settings (Q1)
Provide a new path to install Wikibase Suite via web interface, including automated software installation, improved error handling for domain setup and password configuration (Q2)
We offer new and/or improved access methods and they are increasingly used
Improve the technical infrastructure behind Wikidata dumps (researched and then delayed until we have more clarity on the future direction of Wikimedia dumps in general from the WMF) (Q1)
Start UX research into improving documentation for reusers (Q1)
