Help:Connect-a-Thon

Contents 1 Connect-a-Thon 2 Schedule 3 Registration 4 Teams 4.1 Country Teams 4.2 USA Teams 4.3 Non-regional Teams 4.4 Non-participating teams 4.5 Starting a team 4.6 Splitting Teams and Team Divisions 5 Participation Instructions 5.1 Scoring 5.1.1 Fine Print 5.2 Ideas for Where To Work From 5.3 Current scores and progress 6 Video Chats 7 Prizes 8 Badges for Winners 9 Archives

Connect-a-Thon

The 72-hour Connect-a-Thon is one of our biggest events. Our mission: bring the world closer together by adding missing people on our tree.

It's like adding missing pieces to a puzzle. The more pieces of the puzzle we add, the more we all connect on our single family tree. See the section below on scoring to understand more.

Schedule

Connect-a-Thon XVI will start on Friday morning at 8:00am EST/1pm UTC January 16, 2026 and run until Monday at 8:00am EST/1pm UTC January 19, 2026.

Here is the video chat schedule for those who want to watch.

Here is a time zone calculator to find corrresponding times in your part of the world.

Registration

To have your contributions counted for a team and to be eligible for prize drawings you need to Register in advance. Anyone can join in. Just make sure you have signed the Honor Code first.

To register, simply pick a team (they are listed by type and then alphabetically), click the G2G register link, and post a comment on the team's post answer. If you don't care about the team choice or aren't sure, comment here with a few things about your location or genealogical interests.

After registration closes, the participant badge will be awarded to you.

The cut-off date for registering is midnight (Eastern) on Wednesday, January 14, 2026.

If you have any trouble or questions, contact Eowyn at eowyn@wikitree.com.

Teams

For fun and support, participants are divided into teams. Every participant is on one and only one team.

If you don't have a team preference, reply here and we will assign one that seems to fit your geographic or genealogical interests.

Teams are listed alphabetically by team name.

Country Teams

USA Teams

Non-regional Teams

Non-participating teams

The following challenge teams are not participating in this Connect-a-Thon but may be re-activated in future events.

• Seamróga agus Fòghnain (Ireland and Scotland, a Gaelic alliance). Captains: Feargal Hennigan & Suzy Cairns
• Southern Cross Stars (Australia). Captain: Gillian Thomas
• Welsh Dragons (Wales) Captains: Jutta Beer & Hilary Gadsby

Starting a team

Would you like to organize a team? Teams can be organized around anything, or just for fun.

Team captains or co-captains are expected to:

• Create a free-space profile for your team to communicate on.
• Recruit for your team by replying to members who post on the Register messages asking if they'd like to join your team.
• Communicate with team members to encourage them and cheer on the group.
• During the Connect-a-Thon, post to the team thread on G2G with updates about how the team is doing.
• Engage with your team on G2G and/or Discord throughout the event.

If you're interested, email eowyn@wikitree.com and let her know. If you don't have an idea for a team, she can let you know which ones are needed.

Splitting Teams and Team Divisions

Team Splitting: When a team reaches more than 50 members, they will be asked to split the team. The team captain can decide how to divide the team or ask Azure for help.

Team Divisions: We will split the teams into three divisions based on size. Divisions I, II, and III. Here is the break out for this event:

• Division I (1-10 members)
  • Banyan Tree
  • French Fries
  • Globetrotters
  • Louisiana Roots
  • Musty Dusty
  • Notables Network
  • Smoking Snakes
  • South African Springboks
  • Southwest Sunshiners
  • Splendid Spruces
  • Team Austria
  • Team L’Chaim
  • Team Massachusetts
• Division II (11-20 members)
  • Cornbread Catchers
  • Flying Dutchmen
  • Germany Genies
  • Grave Guardians
  • Irish Seanchaithe
  • Little Team on the Prairie
  • Mini-Soda Twens
  • Missouri Cousins
  • Nor'easters
  • Nordic Noir
  • Super Aussie Genies
  • Team Italy
  • Team Virginia
  • Twisted Thistles
  • Western Red Cedars
• Division III (21-50)
  • Appalachia Roots
  • Canadian Connectors
  • Discord Detectives
  • Kiwi Crew
  • Legacy Heirs
  • Mid-Atlantic US
  • Mighty Oaks
  • NEWTs
  • Northwest Terriers
  • Southern Super Sweepers
  • Team Roses
  • Toddlin' Tortoises
  • Tree Nuts
  • Wizards of Aus

Divisions allow teams to take the top place in their division as well as overall or with the team average.

Participation Instructions

Our goal is to connect more people on WikiTree by adding missing relatives.

Scoring

Scores are tracked automatically. You do not need to use the Challenge Tracker or manually keep track of anything.

Our system counts the number of non-living family members you add. Often these will be "collateral" relatives that members neglected to add when adding their family tree.

All profiles must have at least one valid source. If you have questions on sourcing, see:

• Help:Sources
• Help:Sources_FAQ

Fine Print

Here are more details on the exact scoring method.

Creating any new profile counts as one point, with just two exceptions:

1. If you create a profile with no relationship to any other profile, it does not count.
2. If you create a profile for a living person, it does not count.

For scoring purposes it doesn't matter if profiles are connected to the "Big Tree" or not. Every missing family member we add increases the chances of connecting people, so we want to encourage it.

Our scoring method only counts new profiles. If you add or edit a relationship between existing profiles, it is not counted.

Ideas for Where To Work From

You can start anywhere! Here are some ideas.

• Use the Missing Links app to see relatives who might be missing.
• Start from your Watchlist
  • One of the easiest ways to participate is to work on building out your own family lines. Sometimes we focus so much on our direct lines that we forget about the collateral ones. You can work on building outward, not just upward or downward.
• Work on your Unconnected Profiles
  • If you click here you will see a list of the people on your Watchlist who are not yet connected to the main tree. You can sort that list several ways, and also limit it to a particular surname. If you click on the highlighted word "total" in the first paragraph on that page, you will see a list of all unconnected profiles on WikiTree, which works the same way.
• The Needs Profiles Created Category
  • This category collects profiles that have sources for family members but these family members have not been added yet. For example, a member might have only created a profile for one child in a census and there are other children listed.
• Other ideas:
  • The Connectors Chat lists the largest unconnected branches on WikiTree, unconnected branches which are particularly challenging, and unconnected notables.
  • Data Doctors DBE Unconnected has reports for different countries in the world showing unconnected branches.
  • More places to find unconnected profiles.

For further help, try this tutorial.

Current scores and progress

Here is how to see the current totals for individual members and teams. These progress reports are from WikiTree+.

• The column "Normalized" indicates the score for each team and user taking in consideration the total number of team members participating.
  Score/Number Participants of Team

You can also view the family members that are being added right now on this feed: Newly-Added Family. These additions are what are being counted in the reports above.

Video Chats

We will be hosting live YouTube video chats throughout the weekend to cheer each other on and announce prize winners. There will be a chat every four hours, around the clock, with one winner drawn per chat.

You can find the schedule and links to the chats here.

Prizes

We award special "2026 Connect-a-Thon" items as prizes. Choices include a t-shirt, mug, notebook or mousepad.

We draw one participant at random during video chats. You need to Register and be in the chat to win.

Participants may not win more than one WikiTree prize within a six-month period. This includes prizes given during marathon weekends such as the Connect-a-Thon, and during Bingo and other challenges. Badges and stickers are not limited.

Badges for Winners

In addition to the participation badge, the top winners will get the 2026 Connect-a-Thon winner badge. These winners will include:

• The top 10 winners overall.
• Everyone on the winning team who participated (overall, by average and by division).

If you have Connect-a-Thon questions, please post them in G2G (discussion thread coming soon).

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