Wikipedia Academy was organized for the first time in June 16–17, 2006 at the university library at Göttingen, Germany. Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales was present. To his mind the first academy was held in Germany because of one of the largest Wikipedia-authorship. Furthermore the country is distinguished by their particular high-quality-articles.

In cooperation with the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature the conference in August 2007 focused on the humanities in Wikipedia, aiming for a dialogue between researchers and Wikipedians. For the first time, the Wikipedia Academy was been sponsored by the German Ministry for Education and Research.

The award ceremony for the "Johann Heinrich Zedler Medal" highlighted the second Wikipedia Academy. Wikimedia Deutschland and the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature awarded this prize for an outstanding encyclopedia article in the area of the humanities. The Zedler Medal cames with 3,000 Euro and was sponsored by the German scientific journal "Gehirn&Geist".

With increasing demand the Wikipedia Academy starts to occur at several places in the whole world.

The French pendant named Colloque Wikipédia was held on October 19–20, 2007 at the "Carrefour numérique", a center for digital technology in the science city Cité des sciences et de l'industrie in northeastern Paris.

The first Wikipedia Academy outside Europe took place in South Africa where the Wikimedia Foundation hosted workshops in various locations around Johannesburg on November 10 and 11, 2007. Co-hosted by South Africa-based non-profit organization, iCommons, the goal of the Wikipedia Academies is to strengthening and growing the South African language Wikipedias to help preserve those languages, and the cultural knowledge of their speakers, for future generations.

After the 2008 Academies in Berlin and Argentina the place of happening will be Scandinavia, the Wikipedia Academy in Lund on November 12th and 13th.