Accounts on gitlab.wikimedia.org are connected to Wikimedia developer accounts. If you do not yet have a developer account, follow Help:Create a Wikimedia developer account to create one.

Once you have a developer account, visit gitlab.wikimedia.org and click "Sign In" in the upper-righthand corner of the window. You will be redirected to our idp.wikimedia.org single sign-on server to enter your developer account credentials. Once you have authenticated to idp.wikimedia.org you will be redirected back to our GitLab server.

In order to prevent spam and other abuse, newly registered GitLab accounts must be approved before they can use the service:

• Your GitLab account gets automatically approved within one hour if you are a member of Trusted Contributors in Gerrit, or a member of the Trusted-Contributors group in Phabricator and linked your Developer account ("LDAP") to your Phabricator account (please do so anyway). Only if none of these apply, file an unlock request to expedite access.
• If you are WMF staff, instead: Create your GitLab account, have/get "Wmf" group membership in IDM, link your Developer account ("LDAP") to your Phabricator account, and get automatically approved.

Add an SSH key

Visit the SSH settings in your profile and add a public key. See SSH keys and the GitLab documentation for more details on this process.

Add two-factor authentication

You may be required to use two-factor authentication to access most projects on GitLab.

Click on your user icon, then "Edit profile" or "Preferences", followed by "Account", and the "Manage two-factor authentication" button. From here you can set up an authenticator app, or use a hardware device (such as a YubiKey) as your second factor.

See the upstream GitLab docs on two-factor authentication for more details.