China has blocked every language edition of Wikipedia since April 2019, and Turkey blocked it from April 2017 to January 2020. Russia blocked it briefly in 2015 and has since fined its owner over articles on the war in Ukraine.
Every day we open Wikipedia from inside 24 countries, mostly over home broadband, and record
where it’s blocked, since when and how.
1 of 24tested countries with a confirmed block of Wikipedia
Blocked in China. 24 of 24 results confirmed in the last 48 hours.
Blocked means the networks we test there failed to open www.wikipedia.org, twice, while it opened elsewhere.
“Turned away by the site” means Wikipedia itself refused visitors from that country.
* First observed on this date: the block may be older. Older results are excluded from current totals.
Background
Where Wikipedia is restricted, and why
China blocked the Chinese-language Wikipedia in May 2015 and every language edition from late April 2019, by tampering with name lookups and filtering connections by site name. The Wikimedia Foundation said it received no notice. Wikipedia has encrypted all its traffic since June 2015, so censors can’t easily single out individual articles; they block a whole language edition or the entire site.
Turkey blocked Wikipedia on 29 April 2017, accusing it of a smear campaign after it refused to remove content that allegedly portrayed Turkey as supporting ISIS and other groups. The Wikimedia Foundation took the case to Turkey’s Constitutional Court, which ruled on 26 December 2019 that the block violated freedom of expression. Access returned on 15 January 2020, once the full ruling was published.
Russia blocked Wikipedia for about a day in August 2015 over an article on a cannabis product, after Roskomnadzor warned that encryption left it no way to block that page alone. Since 2022 Russian courts have repeatedly fined the Wikimedia Foundation for refusing to delete articles about the war in Ukraine, and in July 2022 Roskomnadzor ordered search engines to label Wikipedia as a violator of Russian law.
On 28 August 2026 Wikipedia was unreachable across Russia for about eight hours overnight; Roskomnadzor didn’t comment, and no block was announced. Pakistan’s telecoms authority slowed Wikipedia on 1 February 2023 over what it called sacrilegious content and blocked it two days later, until the prime minister ordered it restored on 6 February. Venezuela blocked Wikipedia intermittently in 2019.
Key dates
Wikipedia is unreachable across Russia for about eight hours overnight; Roskomnadzor doesn’t comment.
Pakistan blocks Wikipedia over what its telecoms authority calls sacrilegious content; access returns on 6 February.
Roskomnadzor orders search engines to label Wikipedia as a violator of Russian law over articles on the war in Ukraine.
Turkey restores access after its Constitutional Court rules that the 2017 block violated freedom of expression.
China widens its block from the Chinese-language edition to every language edition of Wikipedia.
Turkey blocks Wikipedia after it refuses to remove content allegedly portraying Turkey as cooperating with terrorist groups.
Get past a block
Wikipedia blocked where you are?
A VPN connects you through a server in another country, so a local block on Wikipedia no longer applies. Where VPNs themselves are blocked, you need one that can disguise its traffic.
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History
Changes for Wikipedia
No confirmed changes since monitoring began on 29 Sep 2026. When a block appears or lifts, and a re-check on several machines agrees, it shows up here.
Method
How we test
Test machines on the two biggest home-internet providers in most countries open the homepage every day.
A failure counts only when it happens twice on the same network, while the site opens from other countries.
A change is published only after re-checks a few hours later and again the next day, on several machines per provider, confirm it. It’s dated from the first sighting.
Test machines caught getting around blocks, through a VPN or a filter-dodging tool, are set aside.
We test websites, mostly over home broadband. Apps, calls and mobile networks can behave differently.
China gave no notice: the Wikimedia Foundation said it confirmed the block from its own traffic reports. China’s censors blocked the Chinese-language edition in May 2015 and widened the block to every language edition in late April 2019, filtering whole sites rather than single articles.
Why Did Turkey Ban Wikipedia?
Turkey blocked it in April 2017, calling it part of a smear campaign, after Wikipedia refused to remove content that allegedly portrayed Turkey as supporting ISIS and other groups. Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled in December 2019 that the block violated freedom of expression, and access returned on 15 January 2020.
Is Wikipedia Banned in Russia?
No ban has been announced. Russia blocked Wikipedia for about a day in August 2015, its courts have fined the Wikimedia Foundation repeatedly since 2022 over articles on the war in Ukraine, and on 28 August 2026 the site was unreachable across Russia for about eight hours, with no comment from Roskomnadzor.
