Check the main website or the page of your specific country for more information
National competitions
All of the upload forms can be accessed fromhere. An international category is also provided for countries without a specific category, transnational institutions or for files uploaded after local deadlines.
Some countrieshave specific national juries.Click on your country in the list for more information in your main language.
People from other countries can use the international upload form –Campaign:wsc-int.
History
This competition originally started as a national competition and it was first organized inEstonia. In 2015, the contest was expanded to all ofEurope and resulted in almost 10,000 freely licensed images attracting over 2,200 contesters. The2017 edition was the first international one and saw an upload of more than 12000 files.
This year the event is organized globally for the 5th time.
How to participate
Create your account
If you don't have one yet, you can create aglobal account that will give you a specific username on all Wikimedia platforms (including Wikimedia Commons) when you log in.
Please notice that as a newly registered user you need towait at least four days before uploading a video file, while images can be uploaded right after the registration.
Check the rules
The main rules are listed on theCompetition website. Here we provide a brief summary.
Check thenational upload calendar for when the upload dates are for your region. Most countries' competitions (that is, with local prizes) run during November or December.
There isno limit to the number of files one can upload. If you upload more than one file, onlyone highest prize is eligible. The rest shall be awarded to the next highest scoring entrant.
The image must be publishedunder a free use license or as public domain. The possible licenses are CC-BY-SA 4.0, CC-BY 4.0, CC0 1.0, and similar.
Images entered into the competitionmust be taken or authored by submitter of the image usinge-mail registered Wikimedia account. In case of multiple authors, all the co-authors’ names must be provided. In case of institutional uploads, submission can be made by a representative of the organization.
The image needs to have agood scientific description. Description in English is required for every submitted image, although descriptions in other languages are also welcomed.
Upload the highest resolution possible. The image size should beat least 2 megapixels, unless the technology used does not allow it. The image must not contain water marks, logos, additional text, graphics (except scales), or insets.
Categories
In the national and international competition there areseven distinct categories: people in science, microscopy images, non-photographic media, image sets, nature, space and astronomy and a general category.
We provide some examples from all around the world.
Lecturer Vadim Evgenyevich Privalov presents material of electrostatics for first-year students of the Faculty of Radiophysics of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. (Dan5265).
Teaching biology at school: classification ofDiptera to assess the quality of waters in the irrigation canals of rice paddies of Vercelli (Monica Girelli).
Inspecting the SuperDARN radar antenna installed at the Concordia research station, Antarctica (Paride Legovini).
Reserachers at Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale
Audio and video files, computer-generated imagery.
Caenorhabditis elegans (Heiti Paves)
Property of high-temperature superconducting ceramics YBCO, an alloy of oxides of yttrium, barium and copper in proportions (Maxim Bilovitskiy)
Diagram of human eye (Chabacano)
On-scale simulated reconstitution of the changes in cell shape (in red) and nucleoid structure (in green), occurring during the D. radiodurans cell cycle, illustrating the tight coordination of nucleoid rearrangements with septal growth (Kevin Floc'h)
Thematically linked images, that can be viewed as one set. Image set could be made up from up to 10 separate images. In the last case, images titles must be similar to each other (they could be named using a progressive pattern such as “Name 1.jpg”, “Name 2.jpg” etc).
Organisms who grow or live wild in an area. Macro photography also falls under this category. Some pictures in cages if scientifically relevant might be accepted.
Halyomorpha Halys neanides on fig leaf (Ezio Sacchi)
Paragobiodon xanthosoma hiding into hard coral (Fabio Strazzi)
Thomisus onustus on flower, inject poison into its prey (User:Termauri)
Erithacus rubecula in snowy winter landscape (Samuel Tobler)
It's the most recent category created starting from the 2021 edition (previously such files were put under "general")
Misure Lidar da un'installazione nelDome C, Antartide (Paride Legovini)
image of the rose-coloured star forming region Messier 17 was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile (European Southern Observatory)
Emission-line filtered image of the Carina Nebula, photographed using a modified version of what is known as the Hubble palette
Everything else goes into this category, from archaeology to thermodynamics and from medicine to vulcanology.
Archaeologist from Chodlik Archaeological Mission of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences working with archaeological finds from early medieval burials discovered in Chodlik (Archeologia.chodlik)
figurative decoration of the "Glass" or "Cup" "of the Warriors of Archena" and is created through a special image treatment process.
Aerial view of the tributary of the Chusovaya river, Sverdlovsk region
Over the years, additional categories have been suggested by international sponsors. This is an additional assessment, so uploaded files must be placed in the usual competition categories; the organisers and judges will then sort them into these categories, if confirmed.
Uploaded files
Do you need some idea? Do you want see how it's going? You can take a closer look to all files sorted by theme or country, inthis category orthis category (2025). You can find the combine metricson this page.
For a quick glance, aninformal selection of every week of the 2025 edition is given here.