The competition was first organised in Estonia in 2011, and it expanded to all of Europe in 2015. European Science Photo Competition resulted in the addition of 9793 freely licensed images by over 2200 participants to Wikimedia Commons that can now be used in Wikipedia and by anybody for any purpose.
2017 was the first time the Wiki Science Competition was organised all around the world. Similarly, it attracted over 2200 participants. This time 22 countries were involved in organising and the image count was over 10 000.
As WSC is a biennial competition, then the next competition after 2017 took place in late 2019. This time there were local organizing teams in 14 countries. One more image category was added (Wildlife & nature). The number of submitted files exceeded 7000.
Some countries (like Ukraine and Russia) kept organizing local competitions also in even-numbered years. For example in 2020 around 4400 files were submitted to local contests.
WSC is once again held in 2021. One more image category is being added (Astronomy). This time there were local organizing teams in 13 countries.
In 2023 the additional option is that countries could run an article competition besides the image competition. That side event was first tested in Estonia in 2020 at it was meant for the even-numbered years when there is no photo competition. WSC 2023 saw 18 countries arranging local competitions and the image count was over 7300.
Statistics
The top 15 countries with the most uploads of valid images in 2017 were:
| Country | Uploads |
|---|---|
| Russia | 1933 |
| United States | 1258 |
| Ukraine | 1105 |
| India | 1095 |
| Iran | 793 |
| Italy | 760 |
| Poland | 350 |
| Thailand | 264 |
| Saudi Arabia | 208 |
| Georgia | 192 |
| Brazil | 173 |
| Estonia | 144 |
| Spain | 138 |
| Greece | 112 |
| Czech Republic | 111 |