Current and future event templates are designed to indicate that an article or a section is describing a current or future event, and to warn readers about the fast-changing or speculative nature of the article. Such articles usually contain sources to only breaking news reports, which often contain serious inaccuracies.
The current event template may be used to warn the editor or reader about the great flux of edits and the fast-changing state of the article, due to the fact that current events tend to get the most attention from editors. Wikipedia attracts numerous editors who want to update articles in real time immediately after breaking news reports are published. However, sources to breaking news reports often contain serious inaccuracies, and so the template can also draw attention to the need to add improved sources as soon as they become available. In such a case, the template is subject to removal when the event described is no longer receiving massive editing attention.
This template, and the topic-related templates listed below, are not meant to be generally disclaimers indicating that an article's contents may not be accurate, or to mark an article that merely has recent news articles about the topic (if it were, hundreds of thousands of articles would have these templates, with no informational consequence). Generally it is expected that these templates will appear on an article for less than a day, or occasionally longer, but not several weeks (see Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles for more information). If the article continues to have issues with sources, one of the templates listed Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles#Verifiability and sources should be used instead.
This project page is actively undergoing a major edit for time. To help avoid edit conflicts, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed.
This page was last edited at 01:04, 3 January 2024 (UTC) (11 months ago) – this estimate is cached, update. Please remove this template if this page hasn't been edited for a significant time. If you are the editor who added this template, please be sure to remove it or replace it with {{Under construction}} between editing sessions.
The current template also receives parameters; for example:
This article containing a list of disasters may be affected by a currently active incident. Information regarding it may change rapidly as more information becomes available. The last updates to this article may not reflect the most current information about this disaster for all areas. Initial news reports may be unreliable. (Learn how and when to remove this message)
This article is currently being heavily edited because its subject has recently died. Information about their death and related events may change significantly and initial news reports may be unreliable. The most recent updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. Please feel free to improve this article (but edits without reliable references may be removed) or discuss changes on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove this message)
If reliable sources attribute information to a third party rather than stating it in their own voice, it should also be attributed in the article text here.
Note that Wikipedia is not a crystal ball: Wikipedia is not a collection of unverifiable speculation. All articles about future events must be verifiable, and the subject matter must be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if the event had already occurred.
Consider using the {{Speculation}} template for articles that may violate WP:CRYSTAL:
