Wikimedia Foundation elections/2025

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2025 WMF Board election

Introduction

For candidates

For voters

Election method and platform

Organization

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In 2025, the term of 2 (two) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end. The Board invites the Wikimedia movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.

The Elections Committee will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff.

Voting method and platform

Single Transferable Vote on SecurePoll will be used in this year's election.

For candidates

Apply to be a candidate

Main page: Candidate application

Shortlisting process

Main page: Shortlisting process

In the 2025 election, there will be 2 (two) open seats. In a previous cycle when there were four open seats, there was an overwhelming number of candidates for voters to review. The Elections Committee and Board of Trustees determined 10 candidates would be a reasonable number for voters to review. If there are more than 10 eligible candidates as determined by the Elections Committee, a shortlisting process will occur. The process will aim to shortlist 6 candidates, and these 6 candidates will be running in the community voting phase. If there are 10 or fewer candidates, there will be no shortlisting process. The process would be a lot of work for Affiliates only to eliminate three or fewer candidates for community voting round.

Community questions for candidates

Main page: Questions for candidates

In each selection process, the community has the opportunity to submit questions for the Board of Trustees candidates to answer. The Election Committee selects questions from the list developed by the community for the candidates to answer. Candidates are only required to answer these selected questions. Candidates must answer all the required questions in the application in order to be eligible; otherwise, their application will be disqualified.

This year, the call for questions from the community will be merged with the kickoff announcement, so we can collect questions earlier in the process. Then, the Election Committee will select five (5) questions for the candidates to answer. The selected questions may be a combination of what’s been submitted from the community, if they’re alike or related. The selected questions will be incorporated into the candidate application, so candidates only have to answer questions once. This is meant to improve and ease the burden on the candidates, and make it easier for voters to view all the responses in one place.

Candidates lightning talks at Wikimania

A viewing party of the recorded lightning talks from all 6 (six) final candidates will be hosted at Wikimania 2025. In a 3-minute pre-recorded video from each candidate, the candidates will share what makes them a strong candidate and what skills and expertise they will bring to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to advance the Wikimedia movement.

Date: August 6, 2025
Time: 11:45–12:40 Nairobi local time (East Africa Time)
Location: Nyeri (Meeting Room 6)

Campaign rules

Main page: Candidate guidelines

For voters

Frequently asked questions

Are there requirements to be eligible to vote?

Yes, there are. The Elections Committee decides the voting eligibility criteria. You can use the AccountEligibility tool to quickly verify your voting eligibility.

How many times may I vote?

The rule is: one person, one vote. If you have multiple accounts that meet the voter requirement, you can still only vote once. Votes from multiple accounts belonging to the same individual will be struck. To meet the editor voting eligibility, your contributions will be counted across all wikis, if it’s your home-wiki or any other.

If you inadvertently vote twice, you should contact the Elections Committee and ask for the additional votes to be struck.

If you decide to change your vote, you may do so up until the moment the vote closes. This can be because you have changed your mind or if you have made a mistake. Simply vote again and your previous vote will be struck.

How does the STV on SecurePoll work?

Depending on the platform you are using to vote, you will see either drop-down selections or a drag-and-drop interface.

In both interfaces, the voting software requires you to rank at least one candidate.

If you are voting through the web, you will encounter a drag-and-drop interface	If you are voting through mobile or if you don’t have Javascript enabled, you will encounter a drop-down selection
On the voting page, you will see two boxes marked as “Not Ranked” and “Ranked”. In the beginning, you will see all candidate names in the “Not Ranked” box. You are to rank candidates from “Preference 1” (most preferred) to “Preference #” (least preferred; '#' will be the total number of candidates). Starting from the top, you can rank candidates you consider most suitable to be elected by dragging their names from “Not Ranked” and dropping it into the “Ranked” box. You may stop ranking candidates at any point during the voting process. For example, out of the 4 candidates, you can choose to only rank the top 2, and not rank the remaining 2.	On the voting page, you will see a sequence of dropdown boxes. You are to rank candidates from “Preference 1” (most preferred) to “Preference #” (least preferred; '#' will be the total number of candidates). Starting from the top, you can begin ranking candidates they consider most suitable to be elected. Candidates that you believe are less suitable should be marked toward the bottom of their list. Only stop ranking when you have no preference among the remaining candidates. If some candidates are less suitable to you than others, you should continue to rank the ones you consider more suitable. You may stop ranking candidates at any point during the voting process. For example, out of 4 candidates, you can choose to only rank the top 2, and not rank the remaining 2. Candidates need to be ranked without skipping numbers in-between. If you skip numbers you will see an error message. You may not rank the same candidate multiple times, and will see an error if you do.

You can re-vote in the election, which will overwrite your previous vote. You can do this as many times as you like up until the moment the vote closes.

How does transferring votes work? Why shouldn't I rank every candidate?

The voting system is meant to allow voters to rank candidates in the order of preference. Ranking a candidate means that the voter is willing to support that candidate if the higher-ranked candidates are either elected or eliminated.

During the tallying process, votes are initially allocated to each voter's top-ranked candidate. If that candidate is elected with surplus votes or eliminated due to insufficient support, the vote is transferred to the next ranked candidate, and so on.

For example, imagine a voter ranks candidates A, B, C, and D, but not E or F. If candidates A, B, and C are either elected or eliminated, the vote would be transferred to candidate D. If D is also elected or eliminated, and the voter did not rank E or F, the vote becomes exhausted and is no longer transferred. To indicate willingness to support E or F, the voter should rank them as well.

How do I know who to vote for?

You can use the following resources to decide who to vote for:

Click their names to review their applications
Watch the candidates' video statements

Why are only some of the answers in the candidate application translated?

In order to help with voter evaluation, translations are being made available in a number of languages. Translations will be made available for the required questions. The optional questions and answers were intentionally not marked for translation in the template or candidate profile pages for capacity reasons.

I can see the usernames of the voters. Can I or others see how I voted?

The voter list is public; you can see who has cast a vote. This list is used by the scrutineers to make sure all the votes are valid. However, no one can see how someone voted; your vote is not attributable to you.

Candidates

Following the candidate review process, these four candidates will be on the ballot for the community voting phase:

Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA))
James Alexander (Jamesofur (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA))
Michał Buczyński (Aegis Maelstrom (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA))
Wojciech Pędzich (Wojciech Pędzich (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA))

Watch the candidates' statements below:

Bobby Shabangu
James Alexander
Michał Buczyński
Wojciech Pędzich

Timeline

The timeline below is subject to change, in response to improvements to the process.

Date	Activity	Status
May 1, 2025―May 15, 2025	Community review of the selection rules	Completed
May 22, 2025	Launch announcement with finalized selection rules and call for questions from the community	Completed
June 17, 2025―~~July 2, 2025~~ July 9, 2025	Call for candidates (open for 2 3 weeks)	Completed
First half of July 2025	Candidate verification	Completed
Second half of July 2025	Shortlisting candidates, if necessary	Completed
End of July 2025	Final list of candidates	Completed
Month of July 2025	Candidate pre-onboarding	Completed
July 29, 2025―October 7, 2025	Campaigning period for candidates	Completed
August 2025―October 2025	Background checks on the selected candidates	Completed
October 8, 2025―October 22, 2025, 23:59 UTC	Voting period (open for 2 weeks)	Completed
October 2025―November 2025	Preliminary results, after votes are scrutinized	Completed
December 2025	Board confirms and seats the selected candidates at the Board meeting