Commons:Wiki Science Competition 2025 in Switzerland

Wiki Science Competition is an international photo and video competition organized with the core support of
Wikimedia Switzerland, Wikimedia Estonia
Swiss Upload phase: 15th November 2025 - 15th December 2025

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Wiki Science Competition is the biggest science photo competition in the world. Since 2019, Switzerland is taking part for the fourth time in Wiki Science Competition 2025 (WSC), with its own national jury and prizes, thanks to the financial support of Wikimedia Switzerland. The competition also includes Liechtenstein.

The national competition

Files of scientists, research subjects and technical processes are all welcome.

Utilizing photos, graphs, and videos serves as a means to share academic findings, teaching ideas or educate the citizens about technical and scientific endeavors funded by the public.

To qualify as a national finalist, photographs need to be high-quality, displaying accurate colors and proper exposure and framing. Given the project's nature, providing precise information is crucial. The accompanying description should address key questions such as: "Who is depicted in the image? How and where was the photo captured? What details require attention?" Additionally, including links to peer-reviewed publications in the description is appreciated. Some images will be employed for the social media campaign.

For images, the original size is preferred. All submitted photos will be under a Creative Commons licence, CC BY-SA 4.0. The rules of the international competition are listed here.

Categories

In the national and international competition there are seven distinct categories: people in science, microscopy images, non-photographic media, image sets, nature, space and astronomy and a general category.

We provide some examples from all around the world.

People in Science

Scientists in their natural habitat.

Lecturer Vadim Evgenyevich Privalov presents material of electrostatics for first-year students of the Faculty of Radiophysics of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. (Dan5265).
Inspecting the SuperDARN radar antenna installed at the Concordia research station, Antarctica (Paride Legovini).
Reserachers at Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale
Field operator for wood poles inspection (Polux, EPFL) in Turkey (User:Asticool)

Microscopy images

Optical, electron, and scanning probe microscopy images all fall under this category.

Linear arrangement of ascospores in the asci of the fungus Sordaria macrospora (Aurora Storlazzi).
False-color SEM image of a suspended nano-LC resonator (Alessandro Pitanti)
Confocal laser scanning fluorescence micrograph of thale cress anther (part of stamen), (Heiti Paves)
10 𝝻m heart-shaped sample under scanning election microscopy (Yating Zhang)

Non-photographic media

Audio and video files, computer-generated imagery.

Caenorhabditis elegans (Heiti Paves)
Property of high-temperature superconducting ceramics YBCO, an alloy of oxides of yttrium, barium and copper in proportions (Maxim Bilovitskiy)
Diagram of human eye (Chabacano)
On-scale simulated reconstitution of the changes in cell shape (in red) and nucleoid structure (in green), occurring during the D. radiodurans cell cycle, illustrating the tight coordination of nucleoid rearrangements with septal growth (Kevin Floc'h)

Image sets

Thematically linked images, that can be viewed as one set. Image set could be made up from up to 10 separate images. In the last case, images titles must be similar to each other (they could be named using a progressive pattern such as “Name 1.jpg”, “Name 2.jpg” etc).

Morphology of Zygaena (Lepidoptera; Zygaenidae; Zygaena; Fabricius 1775) wings (Francisco Martinez Clavel)
Corona Discharge (MrJanCroatian)
University of Rennes 1 - Charles Oberthür's Lepidoptera collections - holarctic ecozone (EdouardHue & VIGNERON)
Seeds with elaiosomes (Hans Stuessi)

Wildlife & nature

Organisms who grow or live wild in an area. Macro photography also falls under this category. Some pictures in cages if scientifically relevant might be accepted.

Halyomorpha Halys neanides on fig leaf (Ezio Sacchi)
Paragobiodon xanthosoma hiding into hard coral (Fabio Strazzi)
Thomisus onustus on flower, inject poison into its prey (User:Termauri)
Erithacus rubecula in snowy winter landscape (Samuel Tobler)

Space and astronomy

It's the most recent category created starting from the 2021 edition (previously such files were put under "general")

Misure Lidar da un'installazione nel Dome C, Antartide (Paride Legovini)
image of the rose-coloured star forming region Messier 17 was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile (European Southern Observatory)
Emission-line filtered image of the Carina Nebula, photographed using a modified version of what is known as the Hubble palette

General category

Everything else goes into this category, from archaeology to thermodynamics and from medicine to vulcanology.

Archaeologist from Chodlik Archaeological Mission of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences working with archaeological finds from early medieval burials discovered in Chodlik (Archeologia.chodlik)
figurative decoration of the "Glass" or "Cup" "of the Warriors of Archena" and is created through a special image treatment process.
Aerial view of the tributary of the Chusovaya river, Sverdlovsk region
Orchid conservation achieved by ex situ propagation

How to take part

Main website - how to participate

The website will be active to upload images from 00:00 (CET) 15 November 2025 up to 23:59 (CET) 15 December 2025.

To participate you will need a wikimedia account, which is valid for all platforms of the wikimedia ecosystem. You can create an account here. Be sure to add your email address so that we can contact you when you win!

Create your Wikimedia account!

The upload link is hosted on this page

Upload your file!

For the "set of images" category, please try to provide sequential naming, so the nature of the group is self-evident.

For videos, you might need to wait few days before you can upload them (it's a filter to prevent massive copyright violation), please inform the organizers if you want to be sure that the upload process is smooth and do not wait the last days.

Files should not be original stricto sensu, the main goal is to increase freely available material on the web, so files submitted with more rigid licenses to previous events can be resubmitted.

Images

If you want to take a look at the uploaded images you can scroll this category.

Here is an informal selection.

Jury

Dominik LANDWEHR (media specialist, publisher, editor of the book series Edition Digital Culture, website )
Alessandro COBBE (mathematics)
Alessandro MARCHETTI (chemistry, outreach)
Mascha STROOBANT (biology, outreach)

Prizes and National Award Ceremony

Winners (1st national finalists) in every category (if assigned) will get (circa) a 400 CHF prize and runner-ups a 200 CHF prize.

The National Award Ceremony, following the previous events in Zurich (2019-2020), Lugano (2021-2022) and Bern (2023-2025), will be held in a different Swiss town. Travel expenses are fully reimbursed by WMCH.

The ceremony 2025-2026 will occur on .....

Social media

#WikiScience #WikiScienceCompetition #WSC2025
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