Wiki Loves Monuments 2024

We are pleased to announce the next edition of the 'Wiki Loves Monuments’ competition. This is an open photo competition so we invite all photography enthusiasts to participate. The 10 best photos from this year’s Polish edition of 'Wiki Loves Monuments’ will go to the international final of the Wiki Loves Monuments competition, where they will compete with photos from dozens of countries.

The aim of the competition is to photograph Polish and World Heritage sites and preserve them for future generations. The idea is to collect documentation of Poland’s material heritage and make it available free of charge to anyone in the world.

The competition photographs will become part of Wikipedia’s multimedia resources and will be able to illustrate entries in its almost 300 language versions. The photos can also be used – completely free of charge – for educational or promotional purposes.

The competition takes place from 1 to 30 September.

Despite the fact that the competition is very popular every year, we should not forget that there are nearly 90 thousand immovable monuments in Poland, so the work of documenting our heritage is still endless, as is the accumulation of the sum of human knowledge. The competition is open to photos of the most famous sites in our country. However, we are even more curious to see photos of less obvious and well-known buildings, which need the eye of a good photographer to reveal their beauty to us. Wiki Loves Monuments is a unique opportunity to show the world the beauty of Poland’s cultural heritage through photography. The best photos will be submitted to an international jury and the winning photos will be seen by the whole world, like Marian Naworski’s 2019 photo of the Evangelical Church in Stawiszyn! Many monuments are still waiting to be discovered photographically, so get your camera and get to work.

Kamila Neuman

Open Culture Manager

The competition is part of the global initiative Wiki Loves Monuments.

The idea for the competition was born in the Netherlands in 2010. A year later, 5,500 photographers from 18 European countries (including Poland) took part in the competition for prizes, submitting more than 168,000 photos – thanks to which Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 entered the Guinness Book of Records in the category 'Largest Photo Contest’. The third edition of the competition, which took place from 1 to 30 September 2012, has already covered the whole world: 15,000 people from 35 countries have submitted more than 365,000 photos.

Unobvious Silesia

For the second year running, the competition will also award special prizes in the Unobvious Silesia category, organised in cooperation with the Wojciech Korfanty Institute in Katowice. In this category, three photos depicting the sights of the Silesian Voivodeship will be awarded.

The photos will be judged on their unconventional approach to the subject (e.g. photographing a well-known monument from an unknown angle) or revealing perspective (photographs of little-known monuments, e.g. those located in small towns or rural areas), or non-stereotypical representation of Silesia (e.g. historic parks or palaces).

Discover your Silesia! We are counting on your imagination in dealing with the topic.

Useful links

JURY 2024

Ewa Caban

Architect, professionally active in the field of tangible and intangible monuments, Head of the Cultural Heritage Centre at the Wojciech Korfanty Institute in Katowice (formerly the Regional Institute of Culture); previously Deputy Conservator of Monuments in the Silesian Voivodeship (1999-2006) and Acting Conservator of Monuments in the Silesian Voivodeship (2006-2007). Author of articles on the region's cultural heritage, author and co-author of numerous conservation documentations.
Wikipedian since 2011, populariser of the idea of open knowledge, member of the Wikimedia Polska Association, editor of Wikipedia, Wikisłownik and Wikiresources. Organiser of the "Fridays with Wikipedia" editing workshops in Katowice since 2018. Wikitriner. Within the framework of GLAM she cooperated with, among others, the Trakt Cultural Tourism Centre in Poznań and the Museum of Metallurgy in Chorzów.

Jacek Durski

Photographer, computer scientist, teacher. He graduated from the Academy of Photography in Krakow. Since 2014 he has published photographs in various publications, and since 2019 his works can be seen in photographic exhibitions (individual and collective). He likes to photograph architecture, post-industrial objects; he creates series on social issues. His photographs have been exhibited and awarded several times at national photography festivals. He has been involved with Wikipedia for nearly 20 years. Since 2014 he runs the School and Academic Project/XLO. Co-creator of the Katowice project. He organises photography classes and open-air workshops with students of WSTI in Katowice.

Kamila Neuman

Lawyer by education, for many years associated with cultural institutions where, among other things, she coordinated exhibitions and cooperated with artists. A passionate photographer, winner of, among others, the competition for the 20th anniversary of FOTOJOKER in Poland, involved in the activities of the TiT Collective of female photographers. An active user and editor of the Wikimedia Commons project, an enthusiast of free multimedia, on a daily basis a manager of Open Culture in the Wikimedia Polska Association. Coordinator of the Wiki Science Photography Competition 2021 and the Wiki Loves Monuments Competition 2022.