professionally formatted outputs, supporting both local engagement and broader research and education.
• Imported Observations: Imported observations from
iNaturalist and MyCoPortal will be clearly marked with their source, treated as read- only snapshots that preserve the original record while still allowing the MO community to add identifications, votes, and comments. A new collector field will properly separate who found a specimen from who entered the record — important for forays and imports alike.
• Project Analytics: A new Project Analytics tab will give projects
at-a-glance summaries of species diversity, geographic coverage, observer participation, and for projects like the FunDiS Rare Fungi Challenges, gap analysis showing which target species and regions still need attention.
Our full 2026 roadmap is publicly
available at
github.com/orgs/ MushroomObserver/projects/16/ views/6, and input from the mycological community on priorities and features is actively welcomed. Te project has an ongoing need for developers who care about fungi — if that describes you, your contributions would be put to good use.
A Legacy of Collaboration From a modest website to a well-
An MO Field Slip accompanying a vouchered collection links a physical specimen to its digital observation record at the point of collection. Photo: Joseph D. Cohen (Joe Cohen) — Copyright © 2025, Creative Commons BY-NC.
between digital observations and physical vouchers.
Looking Forward: Vision and Ambition As MO enters its third decade, the
development roadmap is ambitious. Some of these enhancements may already be live by the time you read this, but here are the planned improvements that will shape the next chapter:
• Full iNaturalist Sync: Bidirectional synchronization with iNaturalist will enable seamless movement of
observations between the two platforms, reducing duplication of effort for users active on both.
• Bulk Observation Creation: Tools for uploading multiple
records efficiently will support researchers and forays generating large numbers of observations in a single event.
• Local “Funga”s and Publishing Tools: Expanded support for
building enhanced local area specific projects that will allow communities to curate and share their regional fungal data in
established platform in online mycology, Mushroom Observer has spent twenty years demonstrating that community-driven science can yield data that is both rich and reliable. We have cataloged hundreds of thousands of species occurrences, nurtured a global cohort of observers and identifiers, and built infrastructure that connects field observations to fungaria, sequence databases, and the global biodiversity record. When I started MO in 2006, I
believed that mycologists, given the right tools and a shared space, would produce something more valuable than any of us could build alone. Twenty years of observations, photographs, identifications, and arguments about identifications have proved that right. Here’s to the next twenty!
Summer 2026 FUNGI Volume 19:2 33
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