Creative Commons

There’s still time! You can make a gift to Creative Commons before the new year. We know that opening up knowledge is key to addressing the world’s most pressing challenges. But new challenges—like the advent of mainstream, commercial AI—have posed new threats to the commons and brought with them risks of enclosure. More than ever, we need resources and tools to respond to new challenges and keep knowledge open, accessible, and thriving for everyone. Your support makes this possible. Please make your year-end gift today and join us in protecting the global commons. https://buff.ly/sbZgGBL Image: Photo by Jocelyn Miyara/Creative Commons, 2025, CC BY 4.0.

Open science is under threat. Research that was once freely available online is being wiped from the internet or locked behind paywalls, hindering scientific advancement and progress for all. CC provides tools and frameworks that empower researchers to share their work openly and securely. Today, over a million scientific preprints are licensed CC BY, making them accessible and shareable, and we’re working to grow that number. Your support is crucial in helping us expand these efforts and protect the future of open science. Will you join us in this mission with a gift today? https://buff.ly/sbZgGBL Image: “Science Center” by slava, CC BY 2.0, Flickr.

CC has big things coming in 2026! Stay up to date with all the news, events, and updates to come by signing up for our newsletter. https://buff.ly/UzzUvyS

"[Open cultural heritage in the public domain] can help shift the mindset from one of custodianship, where heritage is often protected behind walls, to one of stewardship, where it is actively shared, interpreted, and made relevant for today's audiences." Deborah DeAngelis, the lead of the Creative Commons Italy chapter, shares the opportunities she sees for Italy if heritage were made more openly accessible. Join Deborah and sign the Open Heritage Statement at openheritagestatement.org!

2025 was a big year for CC's efforts to expand the accessibility and interoperability of climate data globally. This Open Climate Data project, generously funded by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, focused on building the tools, policies, and guidance needed to make openness the norm and ensure that knowledge flows freely to those who need it most. Key impacts from the project include: -Advising the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) as they make it easy for their 100+ member organizations to follow global data sharing principles with open licensing. While still under development, their GEO Knowledge Hub data platform is expected to be a role model when it comes to usage and display of licenses, attributions, and related metadata. -Partnering with world’s largest climate data producers during the development of our Recommendations for Better Sharing of Climate Data, a valuable resource for everyone publishing and using open data (a more generalized report for all research data is forthcoming!). -Working with the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to strengthen openness across their reporting system through clearer licensing practices. This will help researchers around the world access and build upon current climate science. -Advising several organizations on licensing and policy, including the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), ECMWF, EUMETSAT, Australia Bureau of Meteorology, WMO Africa, Intertidal, and others! The opportunity to expand efforts around open climate data is greater than ever, and we are proud to be part of this growing momentum worldwide.

This year, Creative Commons became an official UNESCO NGO partner (consultative status). This partnership marks a huge step forward for our work to make culture accessible to everyone, everywhere. Together with UNESCO, we’re helping institutions around the world share heritage openly and preserve it for future generations. Our global community is also essential to these efforts. In October, we launched our Open Heritage Statement, a call for equitable digital access to public domain heritage. Since its launch, we’re proud to report that 55 partners have signed on in support of our statement. This momentum shows what’s possible when we work together. But we need you to keep it going. Join the effort with a gift today. https://buff.ly/sbZgGBL Image: “Museum” by Karen_O’D, CC BY 2.0, Flickr.

Creative Commons is joining Internet Archive to celebrate new works entering the public domain, and registration is now open for two Public Domain Day events on January 21, 2026! 🔍 The daytime, virtual event, "The Case of the Disappearing Copyright" will run from 10am-11:30am PT. Registration is free: https://buff.ly/U6N6Wrl 🔍 The evening, in-person celebration at the Internet Archive in San Francisco, "2026 Public Domain Film Remix Contest & Party" will run from 6pm-10pm PT at the Internet Archive. Registration is $15: https://buff.ly/HNldaNi Public Domain Day is held annually on January 1st to celebrate the release of creative works into the public domain—works that are free for public access and reuse. This year, that includes books, films, art and music from 1930 and sound recordings from 1925.

The end of the year always marks an opportunity to reflect on all that we've achieved this past year. Together, we: 📣 Kicked off CC signals, 🤖 Released guidance on using CC-licensed work for AI training, 🔬 Advocated for CC license adoption for preprints and for the open sharing of climate data, 🎨 Launched the Open Heritage Statement, 🌎 Worked to center community in all of our projects, 🎉 And so much more! Read our wrap-up blog post for more on this big year: https://buff.ly/0kpZKbj Thank you to everyone who has supported us and been an invaluable part of this work. What do you want to see from Creative Commons in 2026? “Kaleidoscope 2” by Sheila Sund is licensed under CC BY 2.0, remixed by Creative Commons licensed under CC BY 4.0.

New blog post! What have we been working on with CC signals in 2025? Want to get involved? 📝 Read the blog post: https://buff.ly/GC0ZkYn 🙋♀️ Express interest in participating in the Mozilla Data Collective pilot project: https://buff.ly/MGCl1b3 🎁 Support CC signals with a gift: https://buff.ly/tEg1IkU

Right now, knowledge sharing institutions and digital collections around the world are facing a new kind of threat. With AI bots flooding online repositories, scraping data so fast they’re crashing websites and knocking digital collections offline, it’s getting harder for libraries to keep knowledge open and accessible to everyone. We want checks and balances on AI so that libraries can keep sharing and so that everyone can have access to knowledge. With CC signals, we’re creating a clear way for them to indicate how they wish for their content to be used in the development of AI models. It’s an exciting project but one we can’t do alone. Every small donation makes a difference. Join us in protecting the commons with a donation today. https://buff.ly/sbZgGBL