City Nature Challenge 2026 York
Hello nature fans!
We had a very engaging and positive meeting with experienced City Nature Challenge (CNC) participants for our 1st community meeting on 15th January, and it was especially exciting to meet new faces from a school, eco-church and student union group! For those who couldn't make it, please see our presentation, our York CNC website (being updated for 2026 events as we hear what people want to organize this year), the iNaturalist York CNC 2026 project page, and the following summary of new guidelines and action points.
Dates:
Observations: 24 - 27th April
Identifications: 28th April - 10th May
New Guidelines:
- We can record any wild organism; but not humans, cats and dogs (pets), planted flowers & plants
- No “casual records this year”: observations must be of wild species, have a photo or audio recording, along with a date and a location
- Extra upload and ID time, until the 10th May 2026: to ensure higher quality wildlife information
- new metrics for the 'competition' element has not been set yet but would likely include research grade level of wildlife observation, amongst others (we will keep you posted once the global CNC organizers share this information).
York CNC events:
We will update the York CNC website with all the events people are hosting, so please let us know when you have the time, date, location and any other relevant information confirmed - just email us! The Friends of York Cemetery have already confirmed an event for 26th April from 10:30-12:30pm (thank you, Clive and team!), and it would be great to have a range of events across York during those 4 days of the observation period!
York CNC Launch - 24th April 2026
Would people still like us to organize a Launch event on 24th April, and would it be good to have it at lunch time (like in years past) or in the evening (try something new)? Any thoughts on how to make this even more celebratory, on top of the nature walk doing observations that we typically did? Perhaps add a short film about nature recovery or other positive nature stories, as well as revealing the Leaderboard? Ideas welcome!
Community-building
As always, please share about the York City Nature Challenge widely and if you have ideas about who else to connect with to reach people who may not otherwise typically participate, then let us know! At the meeting and since via email, there were great ideas about reaching out to allotments around the city and in schools and angler groups, and advertising on lampposts, so please keep the ideas coming!
Thanks again everyone! Excited about York CNC 2026 with you all!
Smriti (on behalf of Kian, John, Guy, Erin and Sam)
