Public Domain Day in Europe 2026

New works enter the public domain every year when copyright protection – which lasts up to 70 years after the author’s death in all EU countries – expires. This is the ideal material for heritage institutions to enable reuse. Public Domain Day is an annual platform that celebrates open collections and shares achievements, best practices and future plans. Immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the 11th edition, held on 15 January 2026 at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR).

Author

Bart Magnus (meemoo)

Public Domain Day 2026

The eleventh edition of Public Domain Day took place at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), with partners from both home and abroad. We welcomed around one hundred people in person, once again filling the venue to capacity. Around 50 participants from around the world also joined online to follow the programme.

As usual, the event began with a plenary session, followed by a split programme featuring Belgian and international sessions. In the afternoon, a third option was added with two workshops.

Would you like to experience the plenary sessions (again)? Video recordings and slides are available online. Partners Europeana and Internet Archive Europe have already published reports on the plenary and international sessions. You can view photos of Public Domain Day 2026 here.

Scholarships

For the first time, three scholarships were offered to enable people who could otherwise not attend to participate in person. One recipient shared their experience of Public Domain Day in a blog. At meemoo, we’re happy to complement this with a look at the Belgian sessions. While no video recording is available, the slides are accessible to all.

Belgian sessions

The Belgian sessions focused entirely on practical matters. How do cultural heritage managers handle public domain materials in their collections? What possibilities exist and how are they utilised? And how can others work with them?

Piet Janssens (Royal Library of Belgium - KBR) highlighted the digitisation and access activities at KBR. He emphasised how the public domain status of works in the collection is one of the key factors in prioritising digitisation. Participants were given insight into the entire process: from cataloguing to online access – both on KBR’s own platforms and via Wikimedia platforms.

Bart Magnus (meemoo) explained how digitised public domain works are made as widely and freely accessible as possible on the art and heritage image databases artinflanders.be and thearchives.be. He delved into the underlying processes and demonstrated the opportunities and impact of freely sharing digitised cultural heritage and actively engaging with Wikimedia platforms.

Using the case study of Bram De Ridder ( Sunken Tower), participants were shown an intriguing example of creative reuse of public domain material. Bram, a historian, designs board games using historical heritage material. Easy access to high-resolution digitised heritage is an essential prerequisite for this.

Soetkin Vanhauwaert and Nathalie Poot (KU Leuven) detailed the steps they have taken to unambiguously make university collections without copyright protection officially available as public domain. Over the past year, significant progress has been made within both ‘Scientific collections and heritage’ and the ‘Art Patrimony’. Internal policy has evolved from very restrictive licences on public domain material to maximising open availability via the Blendeff portal.

Sofie Teugels and Clara Iland (Industry Museum and Huis van Alijn) reported on their Wikimedia activities. Clara is Wikimedian in Residence, and from that position is able to make a great deal of public domain material accessible on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. The Industry Museum and Huis van Alijn also strongly focus on community-building via Wiki-cafés, encouraging Wikipedia volunteers to work with the material provided.

Our Dutch guests Alf van Beem and Jos Damen have previously brought many freely available digital reproductions from Flemish collections to Wikimedia Commons. However, they observe that Belgium and Flanders lag behind the Netherlands when looking at cultural content on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia articles on cultural topics. Their talk included practical and technical tips for changing this.

The Belgian session closed with the announcement of the winners of the Wiki Loves Heritage 2025 photo contest. Geert Van Pamel (chair of Wikimedia Belgium) presented the top 10 and awarded prizes to the winners in attendance.