Wikipedia is the largest knowledge resource ever assembled in the history of the world, and it’s freely available to everyone everywhere. It’s there when you want to learn about our changing world, win a bet among friends, or answer a curious child’s question.
Here’s a review of 2024 through the lens of Wikipedia. You can also check out the most popular articles of the entire year in our dedicated blog post.
Wikipedia is a reflection of the world and the people who live in it. Topics ranging from serious news to pop culture, and everything in between, rocket to popularity on Wikipedia as curious people turn to it to learn more. Discover how our collective interests changed month over month this year.
January
Saltburn is a 2023 psychological gothic dark comedy thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell, starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe and Carey Mulligan. Set in Oxford and Northamptonshire, it focuses on a student at Oxford who becomes fixated with a popular, aristocratic fellow student, who later invites him to spend the summer at his eccentric family’s estate.
February
Griselda Blanco Restrepo (February 15, 1943 – September 3, 2012) was a Colombian drug lord who was prominent in the cocaine-based drug trade and underworld of Miami, during the 1970s through the early 2000s, and who has also been claimed by some to have been part of the Medellín Cartel. She was shot dead in Medellín on September 3, 2012 at the age of 69.
March
The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as the TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men’s Twenty20 (T20) cricket league held annually in India. Founded by the BCCI (the Board of Control for Cricket in India) in 2007, the league features ten state or city-based franchise teams. It is the most popular and biggest cricket league and it usually takes place during the summer for 2 months, between March and May each year. It has an exclusive window in the ICC Future Tours Programme, resulting in fewer international cricket tours occurring during the IPL seasons.
April
The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as the TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men’s Twenty20 (T20) cricket league held annually in India. Founded by the BCCI (the Board of Control for Cricket in India) in 2007, the league features ten state or city-based franchise teams. It is the most popular and biggest cricket league and it usually takes place during the summer for 2 months, between March and May each year. It has an exclusive window in the ICC Future Tours Programme, resulting in fewer international cricket tours occurring during the IPL seasons.
May
General elections were held in India from 19 April to 1 June 2024 in seven phases, to elect all 543 members of the Lok Sabha. Votes were counted and the result was declared on 4 June to form the 18th Lok Sabha. On 7 June 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi confirmed the support of 293 MPs to Droupadi Murmu, the president of India. This marked Modi’s third term as prime minister and his first time heading a coalition government,with the Telugu Desam Party of Andhra Pradesh and Janata Dal (United) of Bihar emerging as two main allies.
June
The 2024 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2024 (stylised as UEFA EURO 2024) or simply Euro 2024, was the 17th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international football championship organised by UEFA for the European men’s national teams of their member associations. Germany hosted the tournament, which took place from 14 June to 14 July 2024. The tournament involved 24 teams, with Georgia making their European Championship debut.
July
James David Vance (born James Donald Bowman; August 2, 1984) is an American politician, attorney, author, and former United States Marine who is the vice president-elect of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he has served since 2023 as the junior United States senator from Ohio. He was Donald Trump’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election.
August
Imane Khelif (Arabic: إيمان خليف, romanized: ʾĪmān Khalīf born 2 May 1999) is an Algerian professional boxer. She won the gold medal in the women’s 66 kg (welterweight) boxing event at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
September
Joseph Lyle Menendez (born January 10, 1968) and Erik Galen Menendez (born November 27, 1970), commonly referred to as the Menendez brothers, are American brothers and convicted murderers who killed their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989.
October
Liam James Payne (29 August 1993 – 16 October 2024) was an English singer and songwriter. He was a member of the pop group One Direction, one of the best-selling boy bands of all time, alongside Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson. Payne twice appeared as a solo auditionee on the British television series The X Factor in 2008 and 2010; in the latter, he was invited to join One Direction alongside fellow contestants, placing third and later achieving global success.
November
The 2024 United States presidential election was the 60th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. The Republican Party’s ticket—Donald Trump, who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and JD Vance, the junior U.S. senator from Ohio—defeated the Democratic Party’s ticket—Kamala Harris, the incumbent U.S. vice president, and Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.Trump and Vance are scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president and the 50th vice president on January 20, 2025, after their formal election by the Electoral College.
986,301,159
readers this year in English
2.4 billion
hours of reading in English
300+
languages and counting
4.5 billion
hours reading in all languages
Wikipedia is built by humans – volunteers from all over the world who create and curate all of its content, using reliable sources, according to the encyclopedia’s editorial policies and guidelines. The encyclopedia embraces standards of verifiability, neutrality, and transparency: each article has a history and talk page where you can learn how humans built it over time.
Over
260,000
editors worldwide
Edited
342
times per minute globally
Over the course of 2024, volunteer editors made a total of nearly 82 million changes on over 300 different language editions of Wikipedia. From Germany to Japan and Argentina to Ukraine, editors dedicated themselves to recording and preserving the world’s knowledge and ensuring that everyone can access it. Without their collective efforts, much of what shapes our world today would be lost.
Every hour of every day, volunteers are working to improve Wikipedia. Some people spend their time creating new articles or photographing historic places to upload to the site, while others fix typos or update facts. They also vigilantly defend against information that does not meet the site’s policies. The sum of all their work together leads to a steadily improving, fact-based, and reliable knowledge resource that they give to the world.
We hope you enjoyed exploring our 2024 Wikipedia Year in Review. Every day, we’re making it easier for millions of readers across the globe to find reliable facts in over 300 languages, on the largest repository of human knowledge in the history of the world!
With your help, the Wikimedia Foundation—the nonprofit behind Wikipedia—will continue to ensure that the information you rely on is ad-free and trustworthy, while keeping Wikipedia running smoothly with cutting-edge tools and technologies. Please consider making a donation today. Whether it’s $3, $30, or any amount, every gift makes a difference. Thank you for your support.
Explore the world, create reading lists, find a quick fact, or dive down a Wikipedia rabbit hole with the official Wikipedia mobile app. Download and browse Wikipedia using the official Wikipedia app, and receive a personalized Wikipedia Year in Review in 2025! (Personalized reading insights are calculated locally using data on your device.)
For more information about the data used in this page please visit the project page on MediaWiki.
Data in this microsite covers January 1 – November 22, 2024. It will be updated in January 2025 with data that covers the remainder of the year.
Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan
United States Congress
Instagram account page from journalist Robert Rand
