Here are iNaturalist updates from December 2025, and a bit more about where we’re headed in 2026. See some of the overall highlights from 2025 in this blog post.
General updates
- iNaturalist Co-founder Ken-ichi Ueda decided to leave iNaturalist at the end of 2025. We thank him for helping to create and guide iNaturalist for nearly two decades.
- We ran another round of the Observation Accuracy Experiment to better understand the accuracy and quality of iNaturalist data and how to improve it.
- iNat started our first-ever ID-a-thon on December 15th, and we’re in the final week!
- Released a demo related to scaling identification expertise — try it out!
Product updates
Website
- We started a Provisional Taxa Pilot for fungi in the family Cortinariaceae.
- We updated how some infrataxa IDs work, but it may need more refinement/tweaking.
- Minor bug fixes.
iNaturalist (new app)
- Released version 1.0.12 (189). Minor bug fixes, and an updated new observation chooser.
Android
- No updates
Seek
- No updates
iNaturalist Classic
- No updates
For even more bug fixes and updates, check out iNaturalist on github and see previous monthly updates.
iNat Blog
- Dec 2: New limpet for iNaturalist
- Dec 3: Scaling ID expertise
- Dec 5: Observation Accuracy Experiment
- Dec 11: Community taxon
- Dec 15: ID-a-thon
- Dec 17: Provisional Taxa Pilot
- Dec 17: New orchid species
What’s next
We’re committed to building tools that serve the full range of our community — from expert naturalists who need powerful documentation and collaboration features to newcomers just beginning to explore the natural world.
As we shared in our recent blog post, everything we do is guided by three interconnected goals: connecting people with nature, advancing biodiversity science, and protecting habitats and at-risk species.
We continue to focus on the iNaturalist website and app as flagship platforms for community science, while supporting Seek as an entrypoint and privacy-oriented alternative. Both have important roles in connecting people with nature.
This year, we’re focused on strengthening the core features that make iNaturalist work for our most experienced and involved community members, while also exploring new ways to make the platform more welcoming and useful for everyone. We’ll be sharing our overall product plans for the coming year in a separate post soon.
Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts and feedback — we’re looking forward to an exciting year ahead!