Wikipedia was down for many—here's what we know about the outage

Wikipedia went down for many users around the world today, according to Downdetector — but the issues now seem to be resolved.

<![CDATA[ <article> <div class="live-content"><p>Wikipedia went down for many users around the world today, according to Downdetector — but the issues now seem to be resolved.</p><p>The problems started at around 10.51am ET / 3.51pm BST, when a large spike in reports appeared on the outage-tracking website — the reports peaked at just over 2,000 in the US and 850 in the UK.</p><p>It appears that some 'emergency maintenance' from Wikimedia was the culprit and appears to have now finished — but you can follow what happened in our liveblog below...</p></div><div class="live-content"><h2 id="a-sharp-spike-in-reports">A sharp spike in reports</h2><figure class="van-image-figure inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:1600px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:56.25%;"><img id="NdZYimWYFF5ssanFs8vUVY" name="Wikipediadown-1" alt="A Downdetector graph showing a Wikipedia outage" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/NdZYimWYFF5ssanFs8vUVY-1920-80.jpg" mos="" align="middle" fullscreen="" width="1600" height="900" attribution="" endorsement="" class="inline"></p></div></div><figcaption itemprop="caption description" class=" inline-layout"><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder">(Image credit: Downdetector)</span></figcaption></figure><p>Wikipedia is working okay for me here in the UK, but it isn't for thousands of users right now — the reports graph on Downdetector is now over 3,000 in the US, and it's climbing in the UK too.</p><p>The cause is so far unclear, as there are no current issues at the major cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud or Cloudflare. I'll be digging into this and reporting back shortly...</p></div><div class="live-content"><time datetime="2026-10-21T15:57:11+00:00">October 21, 2026 – 11:57 AM</time><h2 id="please-try-again-later">Please try again later...</h2><div class="see-more see-more--clipped"><figure><blockquote class="twitter-tweet hawk-ignore" data-lang="en" cite="https://twitter.com/cantworkitout/status/2112932463584661584"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">THAT’S A FIRST, I HAVE NEVER SEEN WIKIPEDIA GO DOWN LIKE THIS?everything but the index page fails to load… huhhh??? https://t.co/5DtJ51QIki<a href="https://twitter.com/cantworkitout/status/2112932463584661584">October 21, 2026</a></p></blockquote></figure><div class="see-more__filter"></div></div><p>This is what Wikipedia and Wikimedia currently look like for many users — an "error" page with a "please try again later" message. I've also never seen it go down like that, although it's working fine for me in the UK.</p><p>Strangely, there are a few other outages running concurrently right now, including Asana and the Internet Archive. It isn't yet clear if they're related, but they did start at very similar times (around 10am ET / 3pm BST). Wikipedia is certainly the worst-hit, though. </p></div><div class="live-content"><time datetime="2026-10-21T16:03:37+00:00">October 21, 2026 – 12:03 PM</time><h2 id="39-emergency-maintenance-39">'Emergency maintenance'</h2><figure class="van-image-figure inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:1600px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:56.25%;"><img id="fF84FVpJ8Gb2kx6eLUahKg" name="Wikipediadown-4" alt="A Wikimedia note about scheduled maintenance" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/fF84FVpJ8Gb2kx6eLUahKg-1920-80.jpg" mos="" align="middle" fullscreen="" width="1600" height="900" attribution="" endorsement="" class="inline"></p></div></div><figcaption itemprop="caption description" class=" inline-layout"><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder">(Image credit: Wikipedia)</span></figcaption></figure><p>This probably explains today's Wikipedia issues — the <a href="https://www.wikimediastatus.net/" target="_blank">Wikimedia Foundation status page</a> says 'emergency maintenance' is in progress.</p><p>The foundation hasn't explained how long the maintenance will last or what it's for, but that should hopefully mean it's pretty short-lived...</p></div><div class="live-content"><time datetime="2026-10-21T16:14:46+00:00">October 21, 2026 – 12:14 PM</time><h2 id="phew-it-39-s-back">Phew, it's back</h2><figure class="van-image-figure inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:1600px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:56.25%;"><img id="f6B8SwjQjK9wePfCsx49Lc" name="Wikipediadown-5" alt="A Downdetector graph showing a Wikipedia outage" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/f6B8SwjQjK9wePfCsx49Lc-1920-80.jpg" mos="" align="middle" fullscreen="" width="1600" height="900" attribution="" endorsement="" class="inline"></p></div></div><figcaption itemprop="caption description" class=" inline-layout"><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder">(Image credit: Downdetector)</span></figcaption></figure><p>Good news, it looks like the Wikipedia outage was indeed short-lived — or at least only lasted an hour.</p><p>The Downdetector reports have plummeted back down to zero, which suggests that 'emergency maintenance' is now finished.</p><p>Fortunately, that was all a lot more straightforward than the <a href="https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/website-admins-across-the-world-bracing-for-impact-following-major-php-flaw-reveal">major PHP flaw that's turned government websites dark</a> and sent website admins scambling...</p></div> </article> ]]>