Wikipedia:Administrator elections

Administrator elections

Current status

Voting in the July 2025 administrator elections is now open to eligible voters until 23:59, 29 July 2025 (UTC). If you wish to participate in this year's elections, please review the candidates and follow the voting instructions.
Discussion is now closed. All candidate discussion subpages have been transcluded onto the discussion phase page.

Call for candidates (July 9–15)
Discussion phase (July 18–22)
Voting phase (July 23–29)

← October 2024

July 2025

December 2025 →

Shortcuts

Administrator elections are a process for selecting administrators – users with access to additional technical features that aid in maintenance. It is an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA), which was the only way to become an administrator on the English Wikipedia between 2003 and 2024.^[1] Administrator elections do not replace RfA, and prospective administrators may freely choose which process to use. A trial election was held in October 2024. Administrator elections were authorized permanently on a five-month schedule in an RfC held in early 2025.

Eligibility

Please see the subpage of the latest election for the most recent eligibility requirements for candidates and voters.

Procedure

Please see the subpage of the latest election for the most recent procedures, such as a detailed breakdown of the phases.

Comparison with requests for adminship

Comparison between processes
	Requests for adminship	Administrator elections
Discussion period	7 days (overlapping)	5 days
Voting period	7 days (overlapping)	7 days
Ballot	Open	Secret (using SecurePoll)
Success criterion	Consensus	Supermajority
Success threshold	65–75%^[2]	70%
Suffrage	Extended confirmed account
When it can happen	Any time	Every 5 months

List of elections

Administrator elections
Election	Timeline				Candidates
Election	Call for candidates	Discussion phase	Voting phase	Results announced	Total^[3]	Elected	Not elected
Oct 2024	Oct 8–14 (7 days)	Oct 22–24 (3 days)	Oct 25–31 (7 days)	Nov 4	32	11	21
Jul 2025	Jul 9–15 (7 days)	Jul 18–22 (5 days)	Jul 23–29 (7 days)	TBA	16	TBA

If you'd like to receive a user talk message when important administrator election events occur, such as when a date is chosen and when the Call for Candidates phase opens, please add yourself to the mailing list.

History

Administrator elections were first held as a result of the 2024 RFA review admin election RFC, which reached a consensus for a trial election.

The background to this decision was that the number of requests for adminship (RfA) had declined from a peak of 920 in 2007 to just 36 in 2016, after which it averaged around 23 per year. This suggested problems with the RFA process, particularly that RFA may had become a process that is unfriendly to candidates. Administrator elections were proposed as an alternative that could improved the candidate experience by, for example:

Reducing contention via secret voting - Reduces the opportunity for contentious discussion amongst participants. For example, voters do not have to disclose their vote, nor give an explanation for it. This reduces direct confrontation with the candidate and with opposers.
Shorter discussion period - The discussion period is limited to five days, instead of seven.
No possibility of a bureaucrat chat - Bureaucrat chats add ambiguity about the outcome and the duration, which adds stress.
Many candidates running at once leads to less pressure on each candidate.

The trial election was held in October 2024, with implementation details (such as scrutineering) worked out based on discussions on this page's talk page. After the trial, requests for comment (RfCs) were held to discuss how to proceed. The first RfC asked the community a series of questions to change many small parts of the administrator election process (see #Post-trial RFCs below). A second RfC, to determine whether more administrator elections should be held in the future, was successful.

Post-trial RFCs

After the October 2024 trial election, a series of RFCs were workshopped and then opened for comment to gather community opinions on how the process should be fine-tuned in future, if administrator elections are to happen again. The results from these RFCs were used as the basis for a proposal for running more admin elections. From the RFCs, the following conclusions were drawn:

Pass percentages should remain at 70%.
There should be no limit to the number of candidates in an election.
Elections should be scrutineered by 3 English Wikipedia CheckUsers.
The main election page will link to a category containing unofficial voter guides, and other election pages and talk pages may include direct links to voter guides. There will not be an "official" voter guide.
Suffrage requirements will be the same as at RfA (ie. voters must be extended-confirmed, not blocked, and not a bot).
Candidates will require a 20-support minimum in order to be successful.
Candidates may nominate themselves only during a specified window of time.
Candidates will be ordered alphabetically on the candidates page and in SecurePoll.
The discussion phase will be 5 days long, prior to the voting phase.
Unsuccessful candidates may reapply in future elections without restriction.
Ideally, elections are to be held every 5 months, without a required minimum number of candidates.

Further details can be found on the RFC page.

References

^ Before June 2003, it was possible to request adminship on a mailing list and some admins were appointed directly by Jimmy Wales.
^ As RfA is a consensus-based process, there is no exact threshold for success, but in practice a candidate with below 65% support is almost always unsuccessful, and above 75% almost always successful. Candidates with between 65 and 75% support are typically subject to a bureaucrat discussion about the consensus for their request, and outcomes vary on a case-to-case basis.
^ Excluding candidates who withdrew before the voting period began

[1] Before June 2003, it was possible to request adminship on a mailing list and some admins were appointed directly by Jimmy Wales.

[2] As RfA is a consensus-based process, there is no exact threshold for success, but in practice a candidate with below 65% support is almost always unsuccessful, and above 75% almost always successful. Candidates with between 65 and 75% support are typically subject to a bureaucrat discussion about the consensus for their request, and outcomes vary on a case-to-case basis.

[3] Excluding candidates who withdrew before the voting period began

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