WikiTree Days 2026: Come Celebrate 18 Years of WikiTree!

 Companion post to Episode 10 of A Country Girl Rambles, "WikiTree Days 2026: Come Celebrate 18 Years of WikiTree!" A day-by-day look at WikiTree Days, plus news and what I've been working on. You can also watch the episode on YouTube.

Tomorrow is the big day! WikiTree first opened in November 2008, so this Thursday, 5 November, WikiTree turns 18. This year we're calling it WikiTree Days, because the fun runs from Thursday all the way through Sunday, 8 November. There's so much going on that I wanted to walk through it day by day, so you can pick the sessions you want to catch.

If you're new and just heard about WikiTree, you're so welcome to join us! It's a free, collaborative family tree, and you don't need to be a member to watch the livecasts or hop on a Zoom. As with everything at WikiTree, it's all free!

Register first!


Before you plan your weekend, make sure you register on the WikiTree Days page. That's how you get updates, and it's how you're entered for the door prizes, which will be drawn at random during the last livecast on Sunday. (If you won a prize in the last six months, you're not eligible this time.)

You can also add the attendee sticker to your profile with {{WikiTree Day|2026}}. It adds you to the WikiTree Day Attendees category, and the "My Connections" button on that page shows you how you're connected to everyone else who's coming! There's also a special Discord chat just for the event, so you can chat live, by video or text, all weekend long.

Each day has a question to answer on G2G, and each day starts with a kick-off livecast at 8am ET and ends with a wrap-up livecast at 8pm ET, so you can always catch up on what you missed. You'll find all of them on the WikiTree Days playlist on YouTube. The whole schedule is also on the WikiTree Days Google Calendar, so you can subscribe to it, and if you subscribe to the WikiTree YouTube channel, you'll get a notification as each livecast goes live. Here's the schedule (all times ET).

Twice a day, at 10am and 7pm ET, there's a relaxed Zoom session that switches between Speed Cousining & Fun and Chill & Chat, and each one has its own Discord channel so you can keep the party going. Greg Clarke's App'y Hour is every day at 3pm ET, where he'll be sharing some of the apps and extensions for WikiTree. And Bingo is back by popular demand every day at 6pm ET, hosted by Sandy Patak, with small prizes like a mouse pad for the winners!

Thursday, 5 November: WikiTree's 18th anniversary

Question: When did you first join WikiTree, and what keeps you here? And you can add to our 18 Reasons to be a Part of WikiTree!

  • 9am: The WikiTree Foundation (G2G). Meet the Board of Directors of the new non-profit that will help make sure WikiTree is always free for everyone.
  • Noon: Happy 18th Anniversary WikiTree! Come join Eowyn and me for the big anniversary livecast! That's where I'll officially announce the Ambassadors Project's new monthly challenge, Signal Boosters.

Friday, 6 November

Question: What's the most surprising connection you've discovered on WikiTree?

Saturday, 7 November

Question: If you could invent one new WikiTree tool, what would it do? (You know I'm going to love the answers to this one!)

Sunday, 8 November

Question: What's one act of kindness you've experienced on WikiTree?

Activity: What's your connection to the wonderful WikiTreers we've lost? Find out with the WikiTreer Memorial on the Connection Checkers app. They'll be the default set on Sunday, so you can check your connections to them, and Sunday's Speed Cousining will focus on those WikiTreers.

Project activities all weekend

So many projects have something going on, too! There's the Acadia Project's Deportation Ships Event, the Appalachia Project's Postcard Mystery Weekend and Appalachia Roots Scavenger Hunt (G2G), Australian Connections with the Australia Project, and a Puzzle & CC7 Challenge with the England Project (G2G). The Jewish Roots Project is running a WikiTree Challenge to grow the CC7 of seven profiles (G2G), the Maryland Project has a military challenge (G2G), and One Name Studies has activities all weekend (G2G). The Scotland Project has its Victoria Cross Recipients Challenge and Quintinshill Rail Disaster Challenge, the US Black Heritage Project has the Family Stroll Challenge all week (G2G), and the Germany Project has its own schedule.

It's a lot, and you definitely don't have to do it all. Pick one or two and come say hi!

Introducing Signal Boosters

Signal Boosters is the new monthly challenge from the Ambassadors Project (G2G). It uses the new Share Page feature I worked on for the WikiTree Browser Extension. Everyone is welcome to join in, even if you're not an Ambassador! Share an ancestor, a Space page, or a category you're interested in on your own social media, and then log the link to your post in the Challenge Tracker. In preview mode, you can even share a G2G post. Tag your posts with #SignalBoosters and #WhereGenealogistsCollaborate so we can find them! It works a lot like the Link Builders challenge, and it's a fun way to help more people find out that WikiTree is free.

And speaking of the Ambassadors Project, I'm so happy to welcome Marilyn Astle to our leadership team! She'll be taking the lead on the Link Builders team.

What I've been working on

  • Cemetery Map: This is still in testing and I have been working on fixes from your feedback!
  • WikiTree Sourcer: Cemetery Map has been added as a Sourcer site, so you can build a citation right from someone's spot on the map!
  • WikiTree Browser Extension: the Share Page now works for G2G posts, with the answers and votes right on the card. It's in preview mode right now, and it's perfect for Signal Boosters!
  • Recipe Roots: the review page is now editable, so you can fix the text, the yield, and the family story right there, then tick the box once you've checked it against the card.
  • Games for WikiTree Days: my Bingo app is ready for the Bingo livecasts, and my WikiTree Games app will be in the Chill & Chat Zooms.

Thank you again to everyone who's been testing and sending feedback! You can find all my tools on my WT Apps by Azure page, and each one has a G2G post where you can share what you find.

News from around WikiTree

The next WikiTree Challenge, #11 with Gideon Greenspan, kicks off the Thursday after WikiTree Days and runs 12 to 19 November. We're so excited to have him as a guest this year! Gideon is actually the developer behind Question2Answer, the software our G2G is built on, so it's really exciting to be helping him with his family tree.

And the newest news: the December WikiTree Challenge is now posted on G2G! It's for Andrea Bentschneider, a Hamburg-based professional genealogist behind Beyond History and the German Genealogy Collective. We're really excited to have her as a challenge guest too!

For everything else coming up, check out Help:Calendar.

Which WikiTree Days session are you most looking forward to? WikiTree is a great place to collaborate, and I'd love to see you there!

Hope to see you around the branches!

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