Over the past year, Creative Commons communities around the world have continued to show what’s possible when people come together around shared values of openness, collaboration, and care. In 2025 we were focused on gathering feedback on our ongoing preference signals explorations, creating and gathering feedback on new governance frameworks for future implementation, streamlining community communication channels, and transitioning to an open source chat platform for community collaboration.

In November 2025, we had the privilege of supporting and participating in Semana de la Cultura Libre (Open Culture Week) in Montevideo, Uruguay: a week-long celebration of open culture organized by CC Uruguay. Through panels, workshops, concerts, and conversations, the week offered a powerful reminder that free culture is not an abstract idea but a living practice shaped by local communities, histories, and needs.

Creative Commons is making an important change: we are transitioning our community chat from Slack to Zulip. After considering three platforms—Matrix, Discourse, and Zulip—and gathering input from the community, Zulip came out as the clear favorite. We’d like to warmly invite everyone who sees themselves as part of the CC global community to join us on Zulip.

UNESCO © 2023 by Brigitte Vézina is licensed under CC BY 4.0 We are proud to announce that we are now established as an official NGO partner to UNESCO (consultative status). UNESCO stands for “United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization” and is the UN’s specialized agency that aims to foster international cooperation in the…

A thriving and connected community is key to building a stronger open movement. That’s why, as part of our 2025–2028 strategic plan, we’re placing community at the center of everything we do. Our vision is clear: a world where communities actively leverage CC’s open infrastructure to share knowledge in the public interest. This year, we’re…

Regent Street Looking Towards the Duke of York’s Column, plate twelve from Original Views of London as It Is by Thomas Shotter Boys is marked with CC 1.0 In case you missed it, we recently published our 2025-2028 Strategy which sets the stage for our goals and activities over the next few years. This updated strategy…

This report maps current threats and opportunities facing the open movement, based on the ongoing work of the organizations behind the Common(s) Cause event, which took place in Katowice, Poland, as a pre-conference event for Wikimania 2024 on August 6, 2024. The meeting was organized by Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Future, and Wikimedia…

Thanks to the CC Open Education Platform community’s time proposing projects and voting on the  proposals, we now have five winning ideas to advance open education globally. CC will fund five projects in 2024, spanning Brazil, Ghana, Nepal, and Nigeria. The CC Open Education Platform is also funding ongoing global community work supporting the UNESCO…

We are now welcoming nominations to the CC Board of Directors. Each year, we seek nominations from the Creative Commons community for thoughtful and talented individuals invested in the future of the organization. The CC Board of Directors guides the strategic direction of Creative Commons, provides valuable expertise in key programmatic areas, and champions the…