Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring

This page explains the rules for the 2026 WikiCup. Having the rules codified like this should prevent any confusion or the need for mid-competition clarification. However, the judges reserve the right to adjudicate in the spirit of the rules, rather than to their letter.

The most important rule is that the WikiCup is just a bit of fun – at the end of the day, we're all here to improve Wikipedia. The second most important rule is to treat Wikipedia and other users with respect. If through the WikiCup any participants are hurting the encyclopedia (whether through abusing the rules/systems, creating a negative atmosphere, or whatever else), they will be removed from the Cup. To quote Durova, winner of the 2009 Cup, "Wikipedia is the real winner". Let's hope we can keep it that way.

If in doubt, ask. You shouldn't need to worry too much – the bot will do all the difficult calculations, and is usually very accurate. The rules will not change mid-competition, though clarifications will occasionally be added to this page.

Scores

**2026 round points**
Featured article	Featured list	Featured picture	Featured topic	Featured article candidate review or peer review	Featured list candidate review	Good article	Good topic	Good article nomination review	Did you know?	In the news
200	55	30	15 per article	5	5	35	5 per article	10	5 or 10	12

General rules

Submit your content to your submissions page including all necessary links. See this page for more information.
You may usually only score round points in a round for content which has been promoted, or reviews which have been completed, in that round.
- An exception exists for content promoted or reviews completed after the end of a round, but before the start of the next. In these cases, round points may be awarded for the following round, though submissions' pages should not be updated until the start of that round.
  - This exception usually does not apply for content promoted or reviews completed between WikiCups. Contact the judges if you have any questions.
All reviewed content must have been worked on significantly by you to receive round points. "Drive by" nominations are not permitted. This does not mean that you have to be the primary author, though it is preferable. Merely copyediting or wikifying an article does not constitute "significant work", but if you are one name on a joint nomination, you may claim round points. If this is abused, the judges reserve the right to not award round points.
Generally, you are eligible for points if you are the author of at least 10% of the prose, although this is not a hard-and-fast threshold. You may still be eligible for points even if you have a lower authorship percentage, and the judges reserve the right to not award points, even if you have a high authorship percentage, if the article is of subpar quality.
In the spirit of fair play, contestants have 14 days to submit their work after promotion (for good and featured content), appearance on the main page (for did you knows and in the news articles) or the completion of good or featured article reviews and featured list reviews, by entering it on their submissions page. However, work qualifying in a particular round must be nominated and claimed within 24 hours of the end of the round. Nominations submitted more than 14 days after the round points were earned, or more than 24 hours after the end of a round, will not be eligible.
Please contact the judges if you have a question regarding the submission of articles. You may use the template {{@WikiCup judges}} to ping the judges.

Specific rules

Featured articles

An editor is allowed to be the sole nominator of only one article at a time at FAC; however, two nominations may be allowed if the editor is a co-nominator on at least one of them.

Featured pictures

Generally, the picture should have been created by you (either photographed, drawn, or created in some other way) or been given significant restoration work by you or been released under a free license because of your efforts. Merely uploading a file you have found elsewhere does not constitute "significantly working on" the image.

Featured and good topics

Round points are awarded only for articles in the topic where you were a significant contributor. If you would have a right to claim round points for the promotion of the article to good or featured status, you have the right to claim round points for its promotion as part of the topic, even if you did not nominate the topic.
Promoting an article that is already within a featured or good topic does not get additional round points for the topic. Adding articles to a topic does gain round points, but only round points for the article added. You do not get round points for articles already in a topic when a new article is added.

Featured article candidate reviews & Featured list candidate reviews

These rules are for when you are claiming round points for a featured article candidate review or a featured list candidate review in which you review a candidate using the featured article or featured list criteria.
You may claim round points upon the completion of your review, you do not need to wait until the candidate is promoted or the nomination archived.
Only high-quality reviews will be accepted. If the judges feel your review is substandard or too short, you will not be awarded round points for the review. Generally, a high-quality review will contain substantial feedback that relates to the FAC/FLC criteria, or if that is not possible, a summary paragraph describing how the article already meets the FAC/FLC criteria. Reviews that consist mainly or solely of superficial suggestions will not be accepted. Examples of high-quality reviews may be seen here and here. High-quality reviews need not be long (see here and here for some high-quality short reviews), nor must high-quality reviews result in a "support" !vote (see here for an example of a high-quality oppose).

Good article nomination reviews

These rules are for when you are claiming round points for performing a good article nomination review, not for when you are claiming round points for writing a good article.
You may claim round points upon the completion of a review, that is, when the article is passed, failed or closed.
Only reviews of a sufficient length will be counted; quick fails and very short reviews will generally not be awarded round points. As a rough guide, no review shorter than 1000 bytes will be considered, though the judges reserve the right to decline other short reviews. This is not to say that such short reviews are not worthwhile, it is merely to say that they will not be recognised in this competition.
Except for quick fails, all reviews must include a spot-check of a sample of the sources in the article, in accordance with WP:GAN/I#R3.
Third opinions will generally not be eligible for round points. In the event that you take over a review from someone else for whatever reason, round points may be claimed, provided a full review is given as usual.
Attempts to game good article nomination reviews will be looked upon particularly harshly, and, more so than with any other process, people abusing the system will be removed from the Cup.

Good articles

Round points will only be awarded for articles that have been properly reviewed against the GA criteria, in accordance with WP:GAN/I#R3. These reviews must include a spot-check of a sample of the sources in the article. If your reviewer has not reviewed the nomination against the good article criteria, or if they have not have done a spot check, please ask them to do so, or request a third opinion or a new review at WT:GAN.

Peer reviews

These rules are for when you are claiming round points for performing a peer review of an article.
You may claim round points upon the completion of your review.
Only reviews of a sufficient length will be counted. There are no set criteria, but the article must be sufficiently studied to enable you to make suggestions on how it might be improved. The judges reserve the right to decline inadequate reviews.

Did you know?

Articles with at least 5 KB (that is, 5120 bytes) "readable prose size", whether expansions or new articles, are worth 10 round points. Shorter DYKs are worth 5 round points. The bot will calculate which category the article falls into, but there is also a tool to help judge. Please report any mistakes on the WikiCup talk page. Attempts to game this will not be looked upon favourably.
Round points cannot be granted until the article has actually been featured on the main page. Merely being approved by a reviewer does not count. If a hook is being held for a specific date after the end of the round and you need to claim the round points, talk to the judges.
For hooks with multiple articles, every article is eligible to score round points independently, provided each meets the Did you know? criteria. This does not mean you can claim for articles in the hook that you yourself did not work on.
Round points are awarded for created or expanded articles appearing at DYK. No round points are given for nominating an article at DYK that has been created, expanded or improved by someone else.
Only articles eligible for DYK through being newly created—including through being converted from a redirect or moved to mainspace—or expanded fivefold (not newly promoted to GA status) are eligible for WikiCup DYK round points. It does not matter if the article becomes a GA before being featured on the main page; what matters is that it is eligible to appear on the main page due to being newly created or expanded fivefold.

In the news

Articles appearing on in the news as a bold link are eligible for round points, subject to the normal requirement for substantial work on the article.
Articles appearing on recent deaths are also eligible for in the news round points, subject to the normal requirement for substantial work on the article.

Bonus round points

These are the only cases where content may score additional round points. Other than these distinctions, all content is equal. Bonus round points will generally be calculated and awarded by the bot. Any mistakes or issues in the awarding of bonus round points should be reported on the WikiCup talk page.

From number of interwikis

DYK appearances and promotions to good article, featured article, or featured list are awarded an additional 0.2× scoring bonus for every 5 Wikipedias (including the English Wikipedia) on which the article appeared as of 31 December 2024, up to a cap of 3.0×. For example, a featured article (normally 200 round points) appearing on 21 Wikipedias is awarded 1.8 × 200 = 360 round points. A short DYK (normally 5 round points) appearing on 65 Wikipedias is awarded 3.0 × 5 = 15 round points.
This does not apply to ITN, featured pictures, good topics, featured topics, good article nomination reviews, peer reviews, featured article candidate reviews or featured list candidate reviews.
The bot uses Wikidata to calculate the number of wikis on which an article appears. If an article is not linked to Wikidata, or was not correctly linked by the start of the contest, the bot may miscalculate the correct number of bonus round points to award. Please report any such incidents on the WikiCup talk page.

The table below shows the bonuses:

Interwiki bonus round points
No.  Wikipedias (as of 31 December 2025)	Multiplier (bonus%)
0–4	1.0× (+0%)
5–9	1.2× (+20%)
10–14	1.4× (+40%)
15–19	1.6× (+60%)
20–24	1.8× (+80%)
25–29	2.0× (+100%)
30–34	2.2× (+120%)
35–39	2.4× (+140%)
40–44	2.6× (+160%)
45–49	2.8× (+180%)
50+	3.0× (+200%)

You can request (or run yourself) a query on Wikidata to generate lists of high sitelink items by topic.

From DYK age

In addition, DYK appearances for articles that were created during or before 2020 will be awarded at least 5 bonus round points, provided that the article was not nominated to DYK solely for being a recently promoted GA. In particular, DYK submissions for articles created in 2020 receive 5 bonus points, and for each additional year prior to 2020, the bonus increases by 1. For example, a DYK for an article started in 2015 will receive 10 bonus round points for age.
The age bonus does not consider any period during which an article was only a redirect, draft, or disambiguation page.
Articles that have been moved are eligible for the bonus as long as they would have been eligible for DYK as a fivefold expansion.
The age bonus may be claimed in addition to the aforementioned interwiki bonus. However, it is not added to the base used to calculate that bonus. For example, a DYK for a 6kB article on 25 Wikipedias that has existed since 2015 would be worth (2.0 × 10) + 10 = 30 round points.

Tournament points

At the end of each round, those who placed 16th or better are awarded a number of tournament points based on their placement. This is equal to the square of their placement above 17th (refer to the table below). All other contestants receive 0 points.

Tournament points
Placement	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	11th	12th	13th	14th	15th	16th	17th or below
Tournament points received	256	225	196	169	144	121	100	81	64	49	36	25	16	9	4	1	0

Final placement is determined by total tournament points. Tournament points for the 2026 WikiCup will be tabulated manually at Wikipedia:WikiCup/History/2026/Tournament points table. Contestants will no longer be disqualified solely based on how many round points they have (they may, however, still be disqualified if they are community banned or topic-banned).

End-of-tournament bonuses

At the end of the tournament, 128 bonus tournament points are awarded to whoever had the most total round points in each category across all five rounds. Categories are defined by column, even if the column covers multiple things (e.g. FAR and PR). Bonus round points from number of interwikis and DYK ages are not counted in this calculation, but the differing round points from DYK prose size are counted. When the points in the DYK category are calculated, two short DYKs (each worth 5 points) will be treated as equivalent to one long DYK (worth 10 points). The winners in each category are calculated based on whoever is listed in the bottom row of the "Top Scorers" table here.

If two or more editors both score the most total round points in a certain category, the additional tournament points will be given to whoever scored the most round points in that category during a single round. If there is still a tie, each of the tied contestants will receive the additional tournament points.

Tiebreaking

The number of tournament points you receive in each round is based on how many contestants scored more round points than you have. If two or more contestants received the same number of round points, they tie in placement and both get the corresponding number of tournament points. For example, a three-way tie for first place means that all three contestants get 256 tournament points and the next person is ranked in fourth place, not second. Ties may cause more than 16 people to receive points. In no circumstance may you receive tournament points during a round if more than 16 people scored more round points than you.

If, at the end of the tournament, two contestants have the same number of tournament points, the tie is broken by comparing contestants' best single-round scores. If still tied, their second-best rounds are compared, and so on. If still tied after all rounds have been considered, this is treated as a true draw, resolved in the same manner as round-point ties, although by the fifth round this is very unlikely to occur.

What's changed from last year?

The bonus years have been advanced by one year.
The number of points per GA review have been increased from 5 to 10.
Peer reviews are now grouped with FA reviews, rather than GA reviews.
No other changes have been made to the round points system. Round points continue to be reset at the end of each round.