Opera has launched a new interactive archive called Web Rewind to mark the 30th anniversary of its browser. The project looks back at key moments in internet culture, offering users a fun way to explore web history via an interactive timeline. Users can even submit memories of their own early online experiences and win a trip to CERN in Switzerland.
Web Rewind is a digital archive that lets users move through different eras of the internet. They can scroll through years of web culture, revisiting early social media designs, viral trends, and well known moments from the early days of online communities. The archive runs on both desktop and mobile devices and you don’t need to be using Opera to explore it.
Web Rewind
Holding down the space bar, or tapping and holding on mobile, will let you fast forward through different periods of internet history. Specific years can also be selected manually, so you can jump directly to curated collections tied to particular moments in time.
The archive includes references to early consumer internet experiences, including the era of dial up connections and early email culture.
It also touches on the rise of social media and viral video content, showing how online behavior and platform design have changed over the past three decades.
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Jan Standal, Senior Vice President at Opera, said, “In three decades, the web has evolved from a niche scientific tool to an indispensable part of our entire lives. At Opera, we’ve spent 30 years building a faster, better, and more creative window to the world. Web Rewind is our tribute to the community that shaped the web. We want to celebrate the memes, the breakthroughs, and even the quirks that made the web what it is today.”
Alongside the archive, Opera is running a competition for users to submit their own personal web memories. They can share stories about online experiences, websites, games, or other internet moments that defined how they interacted with the web in days gone by.
Submissions can include a short description of up to 500 characters and media files up to 10MB. Entries are open until March 27, 2026, with winners expected to be announced shortly afterwards.
The three selected winners will receive a trip to CERN in Switzerland, where the World Wide Web was famously first developed. They will have access to locations linked to the early history of the web and a visit to the Large Hadron Collider site. The trip will take place before June 30, 2026.
You can access Web Rewind here.
What were your earliest memories of the web? Let us know in the comments.
