Launching: Sunlight.Europe ☀️

Newsrooms and citizens join forces to investigate candidates and disinformation ahead of Europe’s key elections

BERLIN, 28 October 2026 — Seek Initiative, CORRECTIV.Europe, MuckRock, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), Maldita and CORRECTIV Switzerland have launched Sunlight.Europe, a non-partisan project in which media organisations and citizens actively work together to investigate political candidates and check disinformation claims before crucial elections.

Sunlight.Europe turns election reporting into a joint effort between newsrooms and the public. In the months before a general election, newsrooms team up with citizens in their communities to investigate the candidates and the disinformation claims surrounding the vote. In each country, at least 100 citizens will actively work with the partner organisations, for example by sending freedom of information requests to public authorities or checking politicians’ past claims on social media.

The partnership combines different strengths. Fact-checkers such as Maldita track disinformation as it spreads, while investigative newsrooms such as BIRN and CORRECTIV Switzerland dig into who candidates are. Because the partners work in different European countries, the methods and tools developed for one election carry over to the next, building a model that other newsrooms in Europe can adopt. The partners met from 12 to 14 October 2026 at Publix in Berlin for a kick-off training and strategy meeting.

“Citizens want to know who they are voting for, and they are ready to help find out,” said Neus Vidal, Executive Director of the Seek Initiative. “At the same time, newsrooms need to work much more closely with their communities, and elections are the perfect moment to do it. With Sunlight.Europe, citizens are not just the audience and they investigate alongside journalists. It is an innovative way of covering elections, and we want it to become a model for election reporting across Europe.”

“In Germany, at CORRECTIV we are already working on Sunlight investigations into the candidates standing for election and current sitting MPs,” said Joanna Krawczyk Director of CORRECTIV.Europe. “Now we are bringing that experience to Sunlight.Europe, so that newsrooms and citizens in other countries can build on what worked for us and we can create a network of Sunlight newsrooms across the continent.”

Sunlight.Europe is a non-partisan project developed by Seek Initiative and CORRECTIV with MuckRock that builds on successful models in the US by Sunlight Research Desk (now a project of MuckRock, a U.S. -based nonprofit transparency organisation) and Germany with the Correctiv.Sunlight project. The first investigations will focus on the national elections in Spain, Montenegro and Switzerland.

Sunlight.Europe is supported by the Adessium Foundation.

Contact:

Neus Vidal Martí, Executive Director Seek Initiative, neus[at]seekinitiative.org