WikiPortraits shoots the FIFA World Cup!
Fantastic images from past June from the 2026 FIFA World Cup! SXSW London! Nonvitcha in Benin! The Tribeca Festival! The Shanghai Film Festival! Plus, an updated CropTool, a podcast appearance, and a volunteer spotlight, with highlights of our upcoming summer event coverage.
Big news from WikiPortraits: we accredited photographers for the 2026 FIFA World Cup! This marks yet another high-profile global sporting event so far this year for the WikiPortraits volunteer photography community, following our coverage of the World Figure Skating Championships and 2026 Winter Olympics.
Covering the World Cup includes Asatur Yesayants (User:YantsImages) from Armenia, credentialed to the event through YantsImages with assistance from WikiPortraits, and Bryan Berlin, from New York City.
Getting to the World Cup required the kind of persistence the community runs on: as a WikiPortraits volunteer Bryan Berlin spent over a year building his portfolio through National Women's Soccer League matches and a Thanksgiving weekend trip just to shoot a U.S. Soccer qualifying game in Florida.
For the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Bryan tenaciously found a credentialing workaround through a soccer news outlet after his initial WikiPortraits application was not accepted.
Asatur has uploaded nearly 500 images so far from matches in Boston and New Jersey. Meanwhile, Bryan criss-crossed the continent, contributing more than 1,600 photos of World Cup games in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Vancouver.
In June, Asatur and Bryan shot a number of exciting preliminary and knockout 2026 FIFA World Cup matches, including:
- Brazil v Morocco (June 13, 2026)
- Côte d'Ivoire v Ecuador (June 14, 2026)
- France v Senegal (June 16, 2026)
- Canada v Qatar (June 18, 2026)
- United States v Australia (June 19, 2026)
- England v Ghana (June 23, 2026)
- Ecuador v Germany (June 25, 2026)
- France v Sweden (June 30, 2026)
In just under three years, the WikiPortraits initiative, launched in 2024, has now arrived at arguably the biggest sporting event on the planet, and we're documenting it for the global Wikimedia community.
And we are making the images available for news outlets around the world who otherwise couldn’t afford to license images or send photographers.
WikiPortraits meets royalty, rock stars, and tech titans at SXSW London
In collaboration with Wikimedia UK, WikiPortraits sent nine volunteer photographers, some of of whom were accredited as press, plus others who received passes generously provided by Wikimedia UK to SXSW London (June 1–6, 2026).
WikiPortraits covered the festival's convergence of tech, culture, and entertainment across more than 20 venues thanks to these volunteers:
- Amy Martin (User:Amy Martin Photography)
- Arthur J Petron (User:Arthur Petron)
- David Maynard (User:DavidPMaynard)
- John Sears (User:Johnsearsmedia)
- Julia Nekhaenko (User:Photographer.JuliaMustard)
- Lin Bartley (User:Venger1965)
- Mateusz Malta (User:Landsil)
- Sherion Mullings (User:Daltoncitys)
- Luke Dixon (User:Duk3L1xon)
The week's standout moment came on June 3, when Prince William made a surprise appearance for the Diana Award photocall, with WikiPortraits photographers carving out a space in the press pack for the shot.
More Tribeca Festival highlights:
- Donald Mustard, the creative force behind Fortnite, drew a packed room for his talk on the future of interactive storytelling.
- Directors Anthony and Joe Russo, whose Avengers: Endgame remains one of the highest-grossing films ever made, joined Mustard on stage for a headline panel on gaming and film.
- Sharon Horgan discussed the future of TV drama, and Esther Perel, a bestselling author and therapist known for her work on modern relationships, commanded one of the festival's most attended sessions.
- Ruby Wax was our most celebrated capture: her Wikipedia portrait was a decade out of date, but we've corrected that!
Also a special shoutout to Colleen Sturtevant who ran her own (and very popular) WikiPortraits Studio during Tribeca Festival at the Museum of Chinese in America.
WikiPortraits covers Nonvitcha in Benin
Every year, the coastal town of Grand-Popo comes alive for Nonvitcha, a century-old cultural gathering of the Xwla and Xwéda peoples of southern Benin.
Nonvitcha, which means "United Brothers" in the Mina language, blends religious ceremony with dugout canoe races, music, and good food with a chance to reconnect with relatives and old friends.
This year, Wikimédiens du Bénin User Group teamed up with WikiPortraits and AfroCROWD to capture the festival's signature moments, including the grand open-air mass, attendees in traditional dress, and the coastal scenery that frames it all. All images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons to share with the world.
Images by Jule-way Prod, CC BY-SA 4.0.
WikiPortraits volunteer spotlight: Astra Marina Cabras
Meet WikiPortraits volunteer Astra Marina Cabras! Based in Rome and Paris, Astra says she grew up in the shadow of Cinecittà, and attended the Roberto Rossellini Cinema and TV High School, which she says is how visual storytelling became her calling.
As a WikiPortraits volunteer (User:Ondine Goat), Astra went from a curious online application to shooting the Venice Biennale practically overnight. Since then, Astra has covered Cannes, Venice Film Festival, and the Venice Biennale — three of the most coveted press credentials in the world (with many thanks to Wikimedia Italia!) — and now has her lens trained on securing the definitive portrait of Pope Leo XIV.
WikiPortraits shoots the Tribeca Festival in NYC
WikiPortraits returned in force to the Tribeca Festival in New York City this June, covering red carpets and photocalls across ten days of programming. The highlight of the festival was the Taxi Driver 50th anniversary event, where Bryan Berlin photographed Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, and Jodie Foster on the same red carpet!
Jorge Jaramillo caught Al Pacino at the Killing Castro Q&A and Finneas at the Storytellers photocall. Casey Nedelka covered the Hadestown cast premiere and photographed Margo Martindale at The Long Haul, while Claire Fridkin shot Kara Swisher and Marc Maron at a live podcast recording.
Across the festival, WikiPortraits took more than 200 photographs, adding to and updating several Wikipedia profiles in the process.
CropTool has been updated!
Wikimedia Commons contributor Vera de Kok (User:1Veertje) has given CropTool a big overhaul.
The updated tool, a browser-based image editing gadget for Commons, is now mobile-friendly, supports multiple languages via Translatewiki, and includes new controls for brightness, contrast, saturation, and rotation. Smarter metadata handling ensures structured data stays accurate after a crop.
No downloads needed: the entire workflow runs in your browser as a nifty gadget!
Listen to WikiPortraits on WikipediaPodden
WikiPortraits appears on WikipediaPodden, the Swedish-based podcast covering all things Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement!
In episode #371, our own Jennifer 8. Lee and Kevin Payravi sit down for a 20-minute conversation about WikiPortraits — what we're building, and how we fit into the Wikimedia ecosystem. Give it a listen!
Our first cultural coverage in China: WikiPortraits attends the Shanghai International Film Festival
June marked another milestone for WikiPortraits, as we attended the Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF), our first accredited event in China! WikiPortraits volunteer Hongyi Zhou was also the only American accredited to the event.
During his trip to SIFF, Hongyi engaged with filmmakers, executives, and emerging directors through SIFFPROJECT, a festival program supporting new directors with feedback, funding, and industry connections. Zhou also attended workshops on directing, sound design, and curation.
Another highlight: Despite Wikipedia's ban in China, WikiPortraits received full media accreditation from festival organizers, providing invaluable images for use across Wikimedia projects.
WikiPortraits BTS in June
Get involved with WikiPortraits!
WikiPortraits welcomes new volunteers. If there's an event in your region you think should be covered by WikiPortraits, let us know, and we'll help get you started.
Here are some of the events in the WikiPortraits summer calendar:
- Essence Festival (New Orleans, USA, July), with AfroCROWD
- Montreux Jazz Festival (Montreux, Switzerland, July) with Wikimedia CH
- Edinburgh Festival Fringe (UK, August), with Wikimedia UK
- Toronto International Film Festival (Canada, September), with Wikimedia Canada
Donate to WikiPortraits
WikiPortraits exists because of people like you! Donate to help support our photographers efforts to add more quality Creative Commons-licensed portrait photos to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
