Colmena is an open-source software application, co-created with and for journalists, content creators and other collaborative civil society initiatives. Colmena brings together digital tools for the work of media and organizations working in networks and with communities: (audio recorder and editor, conference rooms and virtual editorial spaces, publishing support, and more).

It is an inclusive software committed to the principles of “mobile first” and “offline first”. To ensure the future development and broad use of the software, the organizations that promoted Colmena in 2021 (DW Akademie, REDES A.C., Tanda.net) are now inviting new partners to join the Colmena Consortium, which from 2024 will be the governance body that contributes to the sustainability of Colmena and improve the collective management of the project.

Colmena is a decentralized and federated software. This means that it will not be the Consortium that offers accounts, but that any media or organization will be able to install its own instance using the Colmena Software and manage it under its own terms and conditions. The Consortium will oversee maintaining an active list of allied instances so that they can federate and collaborate with each other.