Poland and Ukraine joined forces in documenting heritage: results of the 2025 Wiki Loves Monuments campaign

For the second time in a row a Ukrainian edition of Wiki Loves Monuments international photo contest had a special category dedicated to Polish heritage in Ukraine — almost 4600 photos by more than 100 authors were submitted. This special category was a joint project of Wikimedia Polska and Wikimedia Ukraine. Mykola Kozlenko (NickK), a member of Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine organising team, Board member of Wikimedia Ukraine, commented: “As a background, Wikimedia Ukraine has been organising Wiki Loves Monuments since 2012, with a goal to collect photos of all cultural heritage monuments of Ukraine on Wikimedia Commons, notably for use on Wikimedia projects. One of the main problems we encountered early on was that our official state lists are biased, especially regarding communist heritage, which was the main reason to have monuments protected or not back when Ukraine was under Soviet rule. And it really matters, as participants are more likely to upload pictures of monuments they associate themselves with. So we started to organise special categories for less represented monuments of national minorities in Ukraine as early as 2013 — Armenian, Greek, later Crimean Tatar, Jewish, German, Polish, and the most recent one, Bulgarian. It does require more work from us, as we also need to find information about monuments that are not listed officially, or read additional sources to add this or that object to the special categories lists. But it helps us to expand the database of cultural heritage, make it less biased. And it helps us to increase awareness, and motivate veteran participants to continue taking part in the contest, and attract new participants, either interested in the multicultural past of Ukraine, or being a part of those national minorities themselves. The Polish Heritage in Ukraine campaign was conducted for the second time, and we are very pleased with the results — almost 4600 pictures uploaded by more than 100 authors, depicting 373 monuments, and out of them — 41 are not officially protected by the state, so they are even more endangered, as they can be not only destroyed or damaged by russian drones or rockets, but they can be demolished or repurposed with no oversight by the cultural heritage protection authorities. The main purpose of a separate special category continues to be to draw attention to these monuments and their condition, and to document them for Wikipedia. And we are very grateful for the support of Wikimedia Polska, that made this project possible, and also to our volunteers and participants for their continued active involvement in the project”. The Polish Heritage in Ukraine campaign was happening alongside the main contest period for Ukraine in October 2025. Volunteers updated the lists for the special category, so as of now it is containing 1358 monuments (488 out of them with no official protective status). During the campaign itself 102 participants submitted almost 4600 photos, picturing 373 monuments (41 out of them are not registered as monuments) from 15 regions of Ukraine. 24 monuments were pictured for the first time. Due to a considerable number of submitted works, there was a pre-selection round. 16 volunteers from Poland took part in reviewing the images. Some Polish volunteers shared their reflections on the photos, their motivation to help, and the process. Piotr “PMG” Gackowski, Polish volunteer helping with preselection, an editor with almost 9 mln edits on Wikimedia Commons, a Polish Wikipedia administrator, reflected: “I participated in the preselection of photos for many reasons. One of them is patriotism. In this way, I can support the memory of Poland and the Polish people. The second point is the curiosity typical of every Wikipedian: I took part in the Polish WikiLovesMonuments and wanted to see what photographs from other countries look like. For me, the difference was that the photographs from Ukraine that I was rating much more frequently showed objects in rural areas. In Poland, large cities dominate, so in my opinion it was a significant difference. At the same time, it is important to me that I can help Wikipedians from Ukraine in their work. I am aware that every monument they commemorate by taking photographs could be destroyed”. Teukros, a Polish pre-selection volunteer, and a Polish Wikipedia administrator, commented: “I have participated in the photo preselection process for the Wiki Loves Monuments campaign (Polskie Dziedzictwo w Ukrainie) twice now, and I have genuinely enjoyed doing so. To be honest, I did not have any particularly special reasons for joining this initiative – the simple fact that the Wikimedia community in Ukraine had asked for assistance was reason enough for me. My experience of participating has been a mixture of sadness and joy. Sadness, because it is plainly visible that Polish heritage sites in Ukraine are often damaged, neglected, and that there is little indication that this situation will improve in the near future. Joy, because the very fact that the Ukrainian community has taken on such a challenge allows us to believe that at least the memory of the Polish presence in these lands will endure. If I were to say what inspired the greatest sympathy in me during this project, it would, paradoxically, be the photographs that I had to reject. Crooked, overexposed, blurry, taken by amateurs without any special preparation – they were perhaps the strongest testimony that, among completely ordinary people, the memory of the shared history of Poland and Ukraine is still very much alive”. The pre-selection volunteers reviewed 4571 images (the organising team removed images submitted by the participants with conflict of interest, like organisers and jury members), divided in such a way, that each image was viewed by 3 volunteers. Archiwald, a Polish pre-selection volunteer, and a Polish Wikipedia administrator, commented: “In February of this year, I received an offer through WMPL to participate in the preliminary selection process as a person assisting with the initial evaluation of photos. I was happy to join the effort, especially since I already had some experience with similar initiatives at the time. As an editor who focuses, among other things, on historical matters, I realize just how useful the files I’ve been reviewing will be. I’m not just referring to the winning photos here; even those that ultimately didn’t receive any awards add significant value to the Commons resources. It’s a very pleasant feeling to look through the contest results and notice instances where the judges rated a photo just as highly as I had earlier. I felt that way, for example, when I noticed that the photographs of the palace in Pryozerne by Oleksandr Malyon had been recognized. Photographs like these have immense historical value, which usually becomes apparent only after many years; therefore, the author’s decision to make them available under free licenses deserves recognition”. Adrian Tync (Gower), another Polish pre-selection volunteer, active on Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Polish Wikipedia, shared: “I got involved in the photo pre-selection process because I’d taken part in the ‘Wiki Loves Monuments’ competition a few times myself as a photographer, and I was curious to see what it was like from the other side. I enjoy browsing and evaluating other people’s photos on Commons, for example in the Quality Images nominees section, so this was the perfect task for me. I’m interested in Polish historical monuments and Polish cultural heritage, and thanks to the pre-selection process, I got to see many of them”. Out of this round 815 photos proceeded to the next round. The organisers reviewed the images more closely, and removed the ones that were not up to the technical standards (like lower resolution), so 711 images proceeded to the main jury, which included Polish Wikimedians and partners of Wikimedia Polska: - Damian Kujawa — Wikimedian, volunteer, activist; - Julia Szablowska — photo editor, photographer, curator; - Magdalena Lachowicz — Assistant Professor at the Department of Eastern Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland; Each work was viewed by all three jury members. 120 pictures made it to round two, where each jury member was asked to evaluate each work from 1 (minimum) to 10 (maximum) points. The guidance when evaluating pictures was: - from 0 up to 3 for technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective etc.); - from 0 to 3 for usefulness of the image for Wikipedia; - from 0 to 3 for originality. - 1 additional point for something special in the picture. The results are presented below, and they are grouped thematically, to showcase the breadth and depth of Polish Heritage in Ukraine, so the awarded works are from different regions of Ukraine, and are grouped by different objects depicted (churches, castles etc). No separate award for active participation — people awarded are among active contributors. Best photos – Churches (pol. Najlepsze fotografie – Kościoły) The author uploaded the first ever pictures not only of the church, but even from the village itself. And his pictures are now illustrating the article about the village on Wikidata and local Wikipedias (Wielki Ostróżek in Polish Wikipedia, for example). The version in Ukrainian did not even contain the mention of the church, as the building is not a listed monument officially. Best photos – Palaces, Estates (pol. Najlepsze fotografie – Pałace, Majątki) Best photos – Other Buildings (pol. Najlepsze fotografie – Inne budynki) The building was built by a Polish architect Mikołaj Tołwiński, there is no article about the school itself on Polish Wikipedia yet. Due to the Russian occupation of Mariupol, getting new free pictures (or even up to date information about the state of the building) is not going to be a trivial task. Former house of the Branicki estate manager (2022). Rozkishna, Kyiv Oblast This is also not a listed building, which makes its status to be more endangered — it is now privately owned, and there were news about it being on sale. Best photos – Chapels (pol. Najlepsze fotografie – Kaplice) Best photos – Castles (pol. Najlepsze fotografie – Zamki) Best photos – Residential buildings (pol.Najlepsze fotografie – Budynki mieszkalne) During the First World War this house hosted a Polish bookshop, and thus was a cultural center for the Polish community in Kharkiv. Best photos – Towers (pol. Najlepsze fotografie – Wieże) Best photos – Cemeteries (pol. Najlepsze fotografie – Cmentarze) Detailed description of each photo in Ukrainian here. Best video (pol. Najlepsze video) Saint day in Chornyi Ostriv, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine © Philip Gavrilyk (Філіп Гаврилюк), CC BY-SA 4.0 Music “Shadowlands 2 – Bridge” © Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 4.0 The best video work was decided by a separate jury, consisting of: - Roman Barabakh — photographer, traveler, founder of a media project Ukrainian Travels; - Oleksandr Havryk — cameraman, editing director, Ukrainian Wikipedian; - Maksym Uvaiev — editing director, film critic. The results of the joint project and winners were celebrated at the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine hybrid awards ceremony on May 30, 2026. The winners absent at the event will receive their prizes by post. Iryna Boiko, communications manager of Wikimedia Ukraine, commented: “This is the second time we are organising the “Polish Heritage” special category in the Ukrainian edition of the Wiki Lobes Monuments contest. The request to organise a separate category for Polish sites has been repeatedly expressed by the participants themselves, because many such sites are now falling into disrepair and simply collapsing in the absence of an active community to care for them. The main focus of the special category was churches, Polish cemeteries, castles and fortresses, but the jury also paid attention to residential and other buildings. Of course, the parameters of inclusion in the contest lists are quite wide, because the very idea of the “Wiki Loves Monuments” competition is to collect photos to illustrate Wikipedia articles, and in order for the article to illustrate the life of a community or a certain period, the parameters of inclusion should be quite wide. So, the special category lists contain buildings created by Polish architects for Polish activists, or buildings where Poles lived, or buildings that were important for the Polish community of a particular settlement — like a bookstore in Kharkiv, that became a center of a local Polish community life. My personal favorite photo, a very symbolic embodiment of what we are trying to achieve through this joint project with Wikimedia Polska, was the work of Valentyn Mahovkin, our long-time participant, which depicts the process of restoring an epitaph on a tombstone in a Polish cemetery in the village of Chornyi Ostriv in Khmelnytskyi Oblast. And, by the way, this cemetery is not officially protected, and only its gate has an official status as a cultural monument…” Can you help us translate this article? In order for this article to reach as many people as possible we would like your help. Can you translate this article to get the message out? Start translation