The Community Champions Program

Zed's open-source project has seen significant growth since its source code was released over two years ago, accumulating over 84,000 GitHub stars and ranking among the top 200 most-starred repositories. This popularity has led to a substantial number of contributions, with over 4,325 non-bot pull requests merged between January and May 2026, 1,194 of which were from 527 unique non-staff contributors. To recognize and encourage active participation, Zed introduced a Community Champions program in September 2025, which acknowledges contributors who consistently enhance the project through quality code, issue reporting, and community engagement. Community Champions are identified based on their contributions and interactions within the team, and over 60 champions have been recognized so far. The initiative aims to foster a supportive environment for contributors, who are encouraged to participate through resources like a CONTRIBUTING.md guide and community support on Discord.