The first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and a month later the Emergency Safety Committee of the International Health Regulations officially declared the situation as a Public Health Emergency of International Importance. The virus quickly spread worldwide and in March 2020 was declared a pandemic. Until now, nearly two-hundred million cases of infection have been confirmed, causing nearly four million deaths. The pandemic and its consequences are having a disastrous impact on societies around the world, and this protracted global crisis is reflected in people’s experience. Importantly, the mental health of many people across the world has been affected. Even in many healthy individuals feelings of fear, uncertainty, distrust, and loneliness are more common, as are raised stress and anxiety levels, and this situation may aggravate symptoms for those with pre-existing mental health conditions. Many are grieving the loss of their loved ones, and more generally a loss of meaning in life. At the same time, there is also notable heterogeneity in how people have responded to this crisis; many have showed surprising levels of resilience, for example by turning to technology-based social interactions to compensate for lockdown restrictions. It is therefore crucial to combine such population-level assessments with a more individual-centered approach. Historical archives show us that past pandemics were relatively poorly documented, but this time around there are widespread efforts to keep a detailed record. Our main concern, as a multidisciplinary team spanning psychology, philosophy, psychiatry, medicine, and anthropology, is that this record also includes a detailed account of how people experienced the pandemic from their own first-person perspective. We therefore decided to publicly release a cross-cultural corpus of subjective reports of the first wave of COVID-19.