Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photo contest for monuments, organized by Wikimedia this September. Wikimedia is the movement behind Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – a global collaboration authored by volunteers.

Cultural heritage is an important part of the knowledge Wikipedia collects and disseminates. Everybody can contribute images as well as write articles. An image is worth a thousand words, in every language at once and local enthusiasts can (re)discover the cultural, historical, or scientific significance of their neighbourhood.

In more than 40 countries all over the world, a national contest will be organized with their national monuments, partners, rules, events and winners.

Every national contest will be able to nominate some of their winning pictures for the international contest. These nominated pictures will be judged by the international jury, which will then award extra prizes to the best images from all participating countries.

The contest is inspired by the successful 2010 pilot in the Netherlands, which resulted in 12,500 freely licensed images of monuments that can now be used in Wikipedia and by anybody for any purpose. Since then, the project helped to collect information on 1,5 million monuments from 76 national competitions − with more than 1,7 million pictures submitted by over 60,000 participants, adding to the sum of all human knowledge gathered on Wikipedia.

Any support is welcome: from uploading a single image, spreading the word about the contest, to becoming a partner or sponsor. This September, cultural heritage will be in the spotlight on Wikipedia – from Brazil to Malaysia, from Norway to South Africa.

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Rules

There are a few rules for photos to participate in the international contest. Most of these rules are also adopted as rules for participation on a national level. Every submission should be:

Self taken and self uploaded;

Uploaded in September 2019;

Freely licensed;

Contain an identified monument;

Nominated through a national contest

Next to that, there is a practical requirement:

The participant must have an activated email address on Wikimedia Commons. No email address may result in your submissions being disqualified.

If necessary, the rules can be adapted via the international coordinators (such as the upload timeframe for some countries).