Most popular edition of Wikipedia by country as of December 2022
[update]
. In grayed-out countries, a local language edition is usually the most popular.
needs update
Wikipedia
is a
free
multilingual
wiki
-based
open-source
online
encyclopedia
edited and maintained by
a community of volunteer editors
, started on 15 January 2001 as
an English-language encyclopedia
. Non-English editions followed in the same year: the
German
and
Catalan editions
were created on 16 March,
the
French edition
was created on 23 March,
and the
Swedish edition
was created on 23 May.
As of April 2026, Wikipedia articles have been created in 361 editions, with 345 currently active, 16 closed and 11 moved to
Wikimedia Incubator
The Meta-Wiki language committee manages policies on creating new
Wikimedia projects
. To be eligible, a language must have a valid
ISO 639
code, be "sufficiently unique", and have a "sufficient number of fluent users".
Variations in editions
edit
Most viewed editions of Wikipedia over time
Most edited editions of Wikipedia over time
Wikipedia projects vary in how they divide
dialects
and
variants
. For example, the
English Wikipedia
includes most modern
varieties of English
including
American English
and
British English
Similarly, the
Catalan Wikipedia
encompasses all
Catalan
variants, like
Valencian
Balearic
or
France's Catalan
Spanish Wikipedia
includes both
Peninsular Spanish
and
Latin American Spanish
and the
Portuguese Wikipedia
includes both
European Portuguese
and
Brazilian Portuguese
In contrast, some languages have multiple Wikipedias. For example,
Serbo-Croatian
encompasses four Wikipedia editions,
Serbo-Croatian
and three different standardized varieties (
Bosnian
Croatian
, and
Serbian
).
10
Additionally, some Wikipedia projects apply different approaches to
orthography
. For instance, the
Chinese Wikipedia
automatically transliterates between six standard forms: three using
simplified Chinese characters
Mainland China
Malaysia
, and
Singapore
) and three using
traditional Chinese characters
Taiwan
Hong Kong
, and
Macau
zh
).
11
12
And rather than relying on transliteration,
Belarusian
has separate Wikipedia projects for the official
Narkamaŭka
and
Taraškievica
orthographies.
13
Wikipedia edition codes
edit
Each Wikipedia project has a code, which is used as a
subdomain
of
wikipedia.org
. The codes mostly conform to
ISO 639-1
two-letter codes or
ISO 639-3
three-letter codes, with preference given to a two-letter code if available.
14
For example,
en
stands for English in ISO 639-1, so the English Wikipedia is at
en.wikipedia.org
The table below lists all the language editions of Wikipedia roughly sorted by the number of active users (registered users who have made at least one edit in the last thirty days).
15
The
Nostalgia Wikipedia
is an
archive
of the English Wikipedia's initial display.
Wales, Jimmy
(16 March 2001).
"[Wikipedia-l] Alternative language wikipedias"
Wikipedia-L
(Mailing list).
Archived
from the original on 20 June 2014
. Retrieved
21 December
2020
Noisette, Thierry (24 September 2010).
"Wikipédia en français dépasse le million d'articles"
[French Wikipedia exceeds one million articles].
ZDNET
France
(in French).
Red Ventures
. Retrieved
21 December
2020
Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie collaborative libre, fêtera ses dix ans en janvier 2011, et a débuté le 23 mars 2001 en version française, mais dès ce jeudi 23 septembre, à neuf ans et demi exactement, la Wikipédia francophone a enregistré officiellement le cap du million d'articles. (Wikipedia, the free collaborative encyclopedia, will celebrate its tenth anniversary in January 2011. It started on March 23, 2001 in its French version, but as of this Thursday, September 23, at exactly nine and a half years old, the French-language Wikipedia has officially reached the one million article mark.)
"History of HomePage"
Swedish Wikipedia
. Archived from
the original
on 8 June 2001
. Retrieved
21 December
2020
"Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab - Wikimedia Commons"
Wikimedia Commons
Archived
from the original on 10 September 2023
. Retrieved
10 September
2023
"Language proposal policy, revision 21811318"
Meta-Wiki
Archived
from the original on 22 December 2021
. Retrieved
31 August
2021
Anderson, Jennifer Joline (2011).
Wikipedia: The Company and Its Founders
(1 ed.). Abdo Group. p. 62.
ISBN
978-1617148125
"Wikipedia:Manual of Style"
English Wikipedia
. Archived from
the original
on 9 September 2023
. Retrieved
9 September
2023
Ferran-Ferrer, Núria; Castellanos-Pineda, Patricia; Minguillón, Julià; Meneses, Julio (2021).
"The gender gap on the Spanish Wikipedia: Listening to the voices of women editors"
Profesional de la información
30
(5): 2.
doi
10.3145/epi.2021.sep.16
S2CID
241442991
Costa, Bernardo Esteves Gonçalves da (2014).
As controvérsias da ciência na Wikipédia em português: o caso do aquecimento global
(PDF)
(Tese (doutorado)) (in Portuguese). Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Decania do Centro de Ciências Matemáticas e da Natureza, Programa de Pós-Graduação em História das Ciências e das Técnicas e Epistemologia. p. 72.
No passado, as tensões motivadas pelas variantes idiomáticas levaram a propostas para a criação de Wikipédias separadas para o português brasileiro e europeu. Tentativas nesse sentido lançadas em 2005, 2007 e 2009 foram rejeitadas pela Wikimedia Foundation, sob pretexto de que não se trata de idiomas suficientemente diferentes para justificar a cisão.
Rogers, Richard (2015).
"Wikipedia as Cultural Reference"
Digital Methods
MIT Press
. pp.
166–
177.
ISBN
9780262528245
. Retrieved
22 June
2021
Tsoi, Grace (27 October 2013).
"Wikipedia China Becomes Front Line for Views on Language and Culture"
The New York Times
"Wikipedias in multiple writing systems"
Meta-Wiki
. Archived from
the original
on 10 September 2023
. Retrieved
10 September
2023
Likomitros, Nikos (14 March 2023).
"Introducing Belarusian Wikipedia: An interview with Volha Sitnik"
Diff
. Retrieved
14 March
2023
"Wikimedia language code"
. Archived from
the original
on 10 September 2023
. Retrieved
10 September
2023
"List of Wikipedias"
Meta-Wiki
Archived
from the original on 20 December 2020
. Retrieved
20 December
2020
7,000,000+ articles
6,000,000+ articles
3,000,000+ articles
2,000,000+ articles
1,000,000+ articles
100,000+ articles
10,000+ articles
1,000+ articles
100+ articles