17/09/2026-23/09/2026

About us

• Next week we will launch our completely revamped website; an exciting milestone for us! With Hugo as our new framework, a self-hosted commenting system (Remark42), and our own Listmonk server for managing mailing lists, we’ve modernised our publishing workflow and automated key processes. The source code is available, along with the complete archive in Markdown format, in the FOSSGIS GitLab repository. Cross your fingers for a smooth transition.

Mapping campaigns

• [1] After almost 15 years, mappers in the US state of Ohio have finished mapping the boundaries of all 1,309 townships there. The community overcame a lack of accurate, authoritative, external datasets by reconciling a variety of sources. Work remains to clean up and update municipal boundaries, which often influence township boundaries.

Community

• Walid Nouh has interviewed members of the OpenStreetMap France board on the Projets Libres podcast. The episode’s guests were asked to talk about OSM-FR, who they are, what the association does, and its current activities.

• Because there were three votes against the Lgbtq=* proposal without a reason being provided (see the discussion on the OSM Community forum about it), Spughetti, the author of the proposal, has written a proposal to introduce a strict requirement to provide a valid reason to vote against a proposal. The reactions on some posts show a split in the community. This is not a good sign for a proposal required to pass the 75% requirement in the voting phase.

Imports

• Imports of boundary and cadastral datasets in Belgium and France have more than doubled the size of OpenHistoricalMap since the beginning of August. The new data skews OHM more heavily toward recent decades but gives contributors more opportunities to improve historical coverage based on present-day features.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The OpenStreetMap Foundation is inviting you to its 20th Annual General Meeting, being held on Saturday 17 October 2026 at 16:00 UTC. The meeting will take place online. The agenda includes apologies for absences, the minutes of the previous Annual General Meeting, reports from the Chair, the Treasurer and the Personnel Committee, the election of the Board, and any other business.

Events

• At the 2026 Ukrainian Urban Forum ‘After Nature’, held in Cherkasy, a dedicated discussion focused on GIS and crowdsourced geospatial data for communities. Fedir Gontsa, a member of the Ukrainian OpenStreetMap community, spoke about the project and showed how micromapping can help cities collect data on accessibility, green spaces, and other features of the urban environment.

Maps

• OsmAnd has published an experimental heatmap similar to Strava Heatmaps but based on GPX traces uploaded by mappers to the OSM API.

• Roni Lindholm made wayside.cc, an OpenStreetMap-powered web map that displays small points of interest that are hard to find elsewhere, such as public toilets, drinking water, playgrounds, post boxes, luggage lockers, shelters and more.

• Wynndale has argued in favour of moving OSM away from the Mercator projection, as modern processors have long been capable of rendering vector tiles in any projection. Mercator not only distorts sizes, but also causes the scale to vary between zoom levels depending on latitude, and creates a gap around 1,000 km wide at both poles. As alternatives, he suggests geographical coordinates with cosine scaling for large-scale maps, as well as area-preserving projections such as Equal Earth, and further illustrated the principle using an orthographic globe view.

OSM in action

• Der Spiegel used OpenStreetMap as its map base to display election results in Berlin’s individual constituencies.

• Geht-Doch Wien, Walk-Space, and Radlobby created ► a map to visualise potential locations for public seating in Vienna, based on OpenStreetMap data. This map shows how seating at regular intervals can support independent mobility for people with mobility impairments, with seating every 100 metres recommended for an inclusive and barrier-free city.

• The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) maintains UN/LOCODE (United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations), a global UN/CEFACT standard for codes relating to trade and transport locations, which is freely available under a CC BY 4.0 licence. The codes can be searched via the online directory, and the list is also available as a SKOS vocabulary in Turtle format. Interested parties can submit requests for changes and new entries via a Data Maintenance Request. The maintenance team decides on these requests at regular meetings, which are open to the public. The new platform uses OpenStreetMap to display the registered coordinates and Nominatim for search.

Software

• Chris Debian reported that Mapilio Mobile, a mobile app for turning photos into street-level imagery and map data, is now open source.

• Sanjay Bhangar has noted that osm-seed moved out of the Development Seed GitHub org and into its own home at github.com/osm-seed. The change reflects how the project is actually being used and maintained today.

• Peter has built a maxheight editor that makes contributing maxheight data more interesting as it calculates the chance of an important bridge-related restriction. The editor also makes it also easier for armchair mappers as it displays Mapillary signs and street images from various open services.

• HeiGIT released two analysis tools based on shadow data to support active mobility during summer months. The hiShade plugin in the Climate Action Navigator shows how shade is distributed across a neighbourhood. The shadow routing application calculates pedestrian routes that keep people out of the sun.

Programming

• Timothé Baleras, Martin Constantino-Bodin, and Ugo Comignani developed Cosmetyc, a library for manipulating OpenStreetMap data in OCaml. The development of this library led to an article, presented at the 37th Francophone Conference on Applied Languages.

• Jesse Back said on LinkedIn that he cold emailed 1,000+ German farmers by using satellite data to estimate how many hectares of land they work. You can watch the video on YouTube, where he explains his workflow in more detail, which includes OpenStreetMap and Overpass API.

Did you know that …

• … map projections seem to be having a moment? Tobias Jung has a website where you can view 355 different projections and compare between them. You can also read Tobias’ 2018 review of the Equal Earth projection.

OSM in the media

• Heise has published a YouTube video about OSM-based alternatives to Google Maps.

Other “geo” things

• Ben Joffe has developed an equal-area projection that uses simple closed-form functions in the forward and inverse directions. By adjusting parameters a map can seamlessly transition to Mercator when zooming in. The method also can be used as a new compromise cylindrical projection that also transitions to Mercator when zooming in.

• Pinlyx has analysed the Turkish website data from the Overture Maps Foundation Places dataset, which contains no OpenStreetMap data, to check how many business websites remain accessible. Their analysis found that of the 685,343 Turkish business websites listed, 271,566 websites did not respond, and 164,281 no longer resolved to anything.

• London Centric reported how drug dealers in London are using Google Maps to advertise themselves by hijacking searches for pharmacies.

• Sebastian Gräff, from The European Correspondent, has published a map that shows where the concert genres of Europe perform (excluding ‘pop’) and asked the reader ‘Europe hosts over 125,000 concerts a year. Who’s playing where?’.

• Yandex.Maps has started embedding ads in its free map widgets that are used on many sites. In the comments, there was discussion of alternatives, including self-hosting using OSM. However, some users noted that most of the alternatives require technical training and reading documentation, which is quite difficult for owners of small websites.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
🇮🇳	Bengaluru	NIMHANS Convention Center	OSM India @ IndiaFOSS 2026	2026-09-25 - 2026-09-27
			UN Mappers Mappy Hour	2026-09-25
🇲🇽	Torreón	Universidad Tecnológica de Torreón	Conferencia “OpenStreetMap: Datos abiertos y más”	2026-09-25
🇲🇽	Torreón	Universidad Tecnológica de Torreón	Taller “Mapeando mi entorno”	2026-09-25
🇩🇪	Düsseldorf	Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2026	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)	2026-09-25
🇩🇪	Karlsruhe	Geofabrik, Amalienstraße 44, 76133 Karlsruhe	Karlsruhe Hack Weekend September 2026	2026-09-26 - 2026-09-27
		Kanjikode, Palakkad, Kerala	OSM Workshop SotM Kerala Pre-event -1	2026-09-26
🇫🇷	Nantes	Le Wagon Nantes	OpenStreetMap, la balade de la data	2026-09-26
			Sudan Solidarity Series	2026-09-26
🇸🇪	Uppsala	Datorföreningen Update	Mapping meetup in Uppsala	2026-09-27
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-09-28
🇫🇷	Saint-Étienne	Zoomacom	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire	2026-09-28
🇩🇪	Magdeburg	Netz39 e.V. , Leibnizstraße 32, 39104 Magdeburg	4. OSM Stammtisch Magdeburg	2026-09-29
🇺🇸	Palo Alto	Startup Island Taiwan	South Bay Wiki and OpenStreetMap Meetup	2026-09-29
🇩🇪	Mannheim	RaumZeitLabor, Mannheim	Rhein-Neckar OSM Treffen	2026-09-30
			Auburn Red Cross Missing Maps Mapathon	2026-10-01
🇫🇷	Angers	L’Arrière Train, 3 rue de Frémur, Angers	Angers Rencontre mensuelle OpenStreetMap	2026-10-01
🇫🇷		Bar Le Schmilblik	Rencontre mensuelle des contributeurs Paris sud	2026-10-01
🇮🇹	Messina	Fablab Messina (via Croce Rossa 63, 98124 Messina)	Hackathon Wikimedia & OSM	2026-10-02 - 2026-10-04
🇩🇪	Essen	Linuxhotel Essen	FOSSGIS-OSM-Communitytreffen Nr. 26 im Linuxhotel	2026-10-02 - 2026-10-04
🇪🇸	Langreo	Casa de la Cultura “Escuelas Dorado”	GeoCamp 2026	2026-10-03
🇮🇳	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India - Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-10-03
🇩🇪	Essen	Verkehrs- und Umweltzentrum	Essen OSM-Treffen	2026-10-03
			TNEI Mapathon 2026	2026-10-05
🇹🇼	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #93	2026-10-05
🇨🇭	Bern	SBB Headquarter	Open Transport Community Conference 2026	2026-10-06 - 2026-10-09
🇦🇹	Salzburg	Bewohnerservice Elisabeth-Vorstadt	OSM-Treffpunkt	2026-10-06
🇩🇪	Braunschweig	Stratum 0	Braunschweiger Mappertreffen im Stratum 0 Hackerspace	2026-10-06
			Missing Maps London Mapathon Beginner Friendly (with Training) (Online) [eng]	2026-10-06
			iD Community Chat	2026-10-07
		Ghana	Everywhere She Maps workshop 2026	2026-10-07 - 2026-10-08
		Barricade, Liège	Carto party OpenStreetMap Café Crypté Liège	2026-10-07
🇩🇪	Stuttgart	Forum 3 Café	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen	2026-10-07
		Barcelona	Junta d’OpenStreetMap Català	2026-10-07
		Brighton College Bangkok Mapathon	Missing Maps Mapathon (Beginner) - Bangkok, Thailand	2026-10-08
		Galerie Bortier	Brussels meetup - byebye Thierry & Joost	2026-10-08
🇩🇪	Bochum	Das Labor, Alleestraße 50, Bochum	OSM-Treffen Bochum	2026-10-08
		irgendwo im Breitsch, wird noch definiert	OSM-Znacht in Bern	2026-10-09
🇮🇹	Catania	Biblioteche Riunite Civica e A. Ursino Recupero	Modifichiamo Wiki e OSM insieme! - Catania	2026-10-10
		École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers	OpenStreetMap, des cartes à la carte !	2026-10-10
🇩🇰	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-10-11
		École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers	OpenStreetMap, des cartes à la carte !	2026-10-11
🇮🇳	New Delhi	East Delhi	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.33 (East Zone)	2026-10-11
			Panoramax Nederland - Online Community Meeting #1	2026-10-12
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-10-12
🇳🇱	Amsterdam	TomTom HQ	2026 Autumn Maptime	2026-10-12

This weeklyOSM was produced by MatthiasMatthias, Nakaner, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

10/09/2026-16/09/2026

Mapping

• v7.2.0 of the iD tagging schema has been released and includes tweaks to labels, new icons, changed fields for various presets, new search terms, better documentation, improved build scripts, and more. Helper presets for some subvariants of aerialway stations, silos, and parking spots were added to make mapping easier. An actual new preset was added for offshore platforms. It includes bugfixes such as dropping bad suggestions, taginfo report includes addTags, and post boxes in USA no longer have duplicate drivethrough fields. Work continues in the background on some larger features, but changes listed above will soon be present in iD, GoMap!!, EveryDoor, StreetComplete, and other editors.

Community

• Andy Allan gave a talk at State of the Map 2026 about how OpenStreetMap’s transport layer migrated from server-side rendered map tiles to client-side rendered vector styles.

• The CoMaps team shared their experience of attending State of the Map in Paris.

• dia-jules explained, in the context of the USA, how unnecessary traffic light penalty times arise in OSRM and similar route planners, and how to reduce them specifically. If junctions on shared trunk roads are tagged as usual with highway=traffic_light at each node, the router counts multiple delays per junction, even though in reality only one set of traffic lights is passed. The more precise method instead places the tag individually at the stop line using traffic_light=signal and traffic_light:direction, so that each route passes through only one traffic light junction. To prioritise the revision, dia-jules drew on traffic volume and accident data from the Illinois Department of Transportation for the Greater Chicago area.

• Emmanuel Arrechea looked back on State of the Map 2026, held at the École Géodata in Paris, where he and other members of LaNum Pays Basque and Mapadour joined 535 participants from 45 countries. He picked out five points from more than 180 talks and workshops, among them the sponsorship of the conference by companies such as Michelin, TomTom, Esri, Thales, and Capgemini, and the way organisations including IGN, SNCF, and Géovélo build their services on OSM data. He also highlighted Grant Slater’s talk on AI crawlers straining OSMF infrastructure and driving some 400 fake account registrations a day. Most sessions are available on OSM France’s PeerTube channel with French subtitles.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Chris Fleming explained, in an OSM Blog post, how naming works in OpenStreetMap, from the primary name= tag to additional keys such as name:en= and official_name=. He used the recent official_name:en-US=Lake America addition to Lake Ontario as an example of how the name tag remains unchanged even after an official renaming, so the lake remains findable under both names. He also noted that OpenStreetMap volunteers have mapped over 115 million names to date.

Local chapter news

• Jochen Topf and Katja Haferkorn of FOSSGIS reported ► that the German Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Public Sector Modernisation is inviting the open data community, stakeholders, and the interested public to participate in an online consultation to gather proposals and suggestions for a more developed framework, to be known as the ‘Roadmap for Open Data’. FOSSGIS has also compiled a statement on the topic.

Events

• The State of the Map 2026 is already documented on Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and OpenStreetMpa Wiki.

Education

• High5apps explained how to add a website tag to a shop or amenity using JOSM. This short tutorial sparked quite a discussion on HackerNews.

• Aoyama Gakuin University’s Furuhashi Laboratory have published a video lecture for the 2026 academic year’s ‘Basic Spatial Information Science B’ course, which covers various topics related to OpenStreetMap.

OSM research

• HeiGIT presented an analysis of cycling infrastructure in 885 European cities, using OpenStreetMap data together with tree canopy and heat-stress data to assess how well cycling routes are protected from heat.

• HeiGIT presented new indicators for its hiWalk tool, developed in collaboration with Walk21, that use OpenStreetMap and other open data to assess factors such as path lighting, tactile paving, tree shade, and access to everyday services, providing a more comprehensive picture of urban walkability.

Maps

• cultours.app is a free interactive map of roughly 100,000 cultural heritage sites in Germany: castles, churches, ruins, memorials including Stolpersteine, Roman and prehistoric sites, towers, and viewpoints. Data comes from OpenStreetMap via Overpass, enriched with Wikipedia and Wikidata. No login, no cookies, no tracking. The developer introduced the project in the German community forum and is looking for feedback on a couple of tagging questions there.

• Dachlast.de presented an OSM-based camping map for Germany and neighbouring countries, which combines a route planner with eight data layers. The map shows campsites, motorhome pitches, drinking water points, toilets, showers, supply and disposal points, charging points, and petrol stations along the planned route. The data is ‘harvested’ weekly from OpenStreetMap and, according to the operator, comprises around 400,000 points in the area stretching from Denmark to northern Italy, eastern France and western Poland.

• The Planet Thinks is a fully turnable globe displaying live changesets on OpenstreetMap as coloured sparks.

OSM in action

• [1] The Institute of Data Sciences at the DLR (German Aerospace Centre) explained ► how geoparsing, that is, the identification of place names in texts and their association with geographical points, lines, or polygons, makes geodata usable for crisis management, supply chains, and research. The team is developing methods for toponym recognition and disambiguation, comparing these against multilingual benchmark data and applying them in various DLR projects, such as geolocating social media content during crises or analysing supply chains in the aviation industry. These methods are also being incorporated into the EU project OpenWebSearchEU, which aims to create a European alternative to dominant search providers, as well as into the collaboration with the Joint Research Centre on news analysis for European decision-makers.

• Heise reported that the interactive map by the action alliance ‘Heiße Luft’ shows the locations of planned and under-construction data centres in Germany.

• Greenways Ireland presented the official website of the Irish Department of Transport for the country’s growing network of car-free cycle and walking routes. The interactive map uses OpenStreetMap with proper attribution and can be filtered by region, theme, and route length. As well as route descriptions, the site provides up-to-date information on route closures and an overview of the national greenway strategy.

• The Bayreuther Tagblatt reported ► that St.-Georgen-Straße in Bindlach will be completely closed for around four days from 21 September due to development work. One positive point is that the map of the surrounding area used in the article is credited as ‘© openstreetmap.org/copyright’.

• Dominik Hochwarth, of Ingenieur.de, reported ► that TU Graz has developed an OpenStreetMap-based tool that estimates the amounts of concrete, brick, and wood contained in buildings. The programme first determines a building’s size and geometry using OpenStreetMap data, then incorporates its building type, year of construction, construction method, and energy efficiency class. Based on this information, the software identifies a suitable building archetype and calculates which materials were likely used in its construction.

Software

• Steven Hooper has built BadCaddie, an app that uses OpenStreetMap golf-course data for course discovery and hole maps, alongside GNSS yardages, scorekeeping, and club suggestions, based on recorded shot distances. It is available for iPhone with an Apple Watch companion and as a plugin for Even Realities G2 glasses.

• Ian Wagner explained how Stadia Maps has been taking a fresh look at the cartographic decisions at every level of their map stack. Their recent water layer changes and water label updates have made a visible difference to the Stamen Terrain style.

• Tina reported that OsmAnd now allows users to colour their tracks based on speed, altitude, or slope data. Custom colour palettes help turn complex GPX data into clear, meaningful visual stories.

Releases

• The CoMaps team has released version 2026.08.31, which is now out across all release channels. New features include the display of reviews from Mangrove Reviews and a new transport modes UI on iOS.

• The OpenStreetMap Carto maintainers have prepared version 6.1.0 of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet. Christoph Hormann detailed the visible changes introduced by this release in an OSM diary post.

Other “geo” things

• TechCrunch reported that Tern has won a contract from the US Army to deploy its low-cost GNSS alternative technology. The US$11.26 million contract will see the Army use Tern’s navigation technology in vehicles. According to its official website, Tern is developing a positioning system that does not rely on satellites, signals, or external infrastructure. It has been tested by the US Departments of Transportation and Defense.

• ABC Science’s Julian O’Shea explored how Australia has been mapped ‘wrong’ from a 1547 world map to modern GPS.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
🇩🇪	Kiel	Kieler Innovations- und Technologiezentrum	OSM auf der Kielux 2026	2026-09-18 - 2026-09-19
🇮🇳	Mumbai	Lokhandwala Garden, Andheri	OSM Mumbai Mapping Party No.14 (Andheri)	2026-09-19
🇮🇳	Delhi	Too Mikkii Tapas, South Extension	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.31 (South Extension)	2026-09-20
🇪🇸	Madrid	Online	Mappy Hour OSM España	2026-09-22
🇬🇧	Derby	The Brunswick, Railway Terrace, Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up	2026-09-22
🇩🇪	Berlin	Online	OSM-Verkehrswende #79	2026-09-22
🇮🇹	Catania	Piazza Roma, Catania (Punto di incontro)	Mappiamo le piste ciclabili - Catania	2026-09-22
		Building 4A, First Floor - Politecnico di Milano	PoliMappers Maptedì	2026-09-23
🇫🇷	Nantes	Le Wagon Nantes	OpenStreetMap, la carte à la carte !	2026-09-23
🇩🇪	Hannover	Kuriosum	Stammtisch	2026-09-23
🇩🇪	Würzburg	FabLab Würzburg	Würzburger OSM-Treffen	2026-09-23
🇬🇧	City of Westminster	Blue Posts pub	London pub meet-up	2026-09-23
			Pravidelný Missing Maps CZ-SK online Mapathon	2026-09-24
🇧🇷		100% online	🇧🇷 Lançamento de livros sobre mapeamento colaborativo	2026-09-24
🇩🇪	Freiburg im Breisgau	CCCFR, Adlerstr. 12 a, Freiburg/Br.	OSM-Treffen Freiburg/Br.	2026-09-24
🇮🇳	Bengaluru	NIMHANS Convention Center	OSM India @ IndiaFOSS 2026	2026-09-25 - 2026-09-27
			UN Mappers Mappy Hour	2026-09-25
🇲🇽	Torreón	Universidad Tecnológica de Torreón	Conferencia “OpenStreetMap: Datos abiertos y más”	2026-09-25
🇲🇽	Torreón	Universidad Tecnológica de Torreón	Taller “Mapeando mi entorno”	2026-09-25
🇩🇪	Düsseldorf	Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2026	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)	2026-09-25
🇩🇪	Karlsruhe	Geofabrik, Amalienstraße 44, 76133 Karlsruhe	Karlsruhe Hack Weekend September 2026	2026-09-26 - 2026-09-27
🇫🇷	Nantes	Le Wagon Nantes	OpenStreetMap, la balade de la data	2026-09-26
			Sudan Solidarity Series	2026-09-26
🇸🇪	Uppsala	Datorföreningen Update	Mapping meetup in Uppsala	2026-09-27
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-09-28
🇩🇪	Magdeburg	Netz39 e.V. , Leibnizstraße 32, 39104 Magdeburg	4. OSM Stammtisch Magdeburg	2026-09-29
🇺🇸	Palo Alto	Startup Island Taiwan	South Bay Wiki and OpenStreetMap Meetup	2026-09-29
🇩🇪	Mannheim	RaumZeitLabor, Mannheim	Rhein-Neckar OSM Treffen	2026-09-30
🇫🇷	Angers	L’Arrière Train, 3 rue de Frémur, Angers	Angers Rencontre mensuelle OpenStreetMap	2026-10-01
🇫🇷		Bar Le Schmilblik	Rencontre mensuelle des contributeurs Paris sud	2026-10-01
🇮🇹	Messina	Fablab Messina (via Croce Rossa 63, 98124 Messina)	Hackathon Wikimedia & OSM	2026-10-02 - 2026-10-04
🇩🇪	Essen	Linuxhotel Essen	FOSSGIS-OSM-Communitytreffen Nr. 26 im Linuxhotel	2026-10-02 - 2026-10-04
🇪🇸	Langreo	Casa de la Cultura “Escuelas Dorado”	GeoCamp 2026	2026-10-03
🇮🇳	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India - Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-10-03
🇩🇪	Essen	Verkehrs- und Umweltzentrum	Essen OSM-Treffen	2026-10-03
🇹🇼	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #93	2026-10-05

This weeklyOSM was produced by Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, HeiGIT, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

03/09/2026-09/09/2026

Mapping

• Voting has started on the lgbtq=* proposal and is open until and including 19 September.

Mapping campaigns

• In a talk at State of the Map 2026, Enock Seth Nyamador explained how massive mapathon campaigns carried out by paid mappers affiliated with large companies or organisations could potentially ‘kill’ the OpenStreetMap movement in Ghana.

Community

• [1] The editors at weeklyOSM don’t just collect and write articles to keep you as well informed as possible about the OSM universe; they also map , some with such great success. We would like to offer our warmest congratulations to @ediyes, from our Spanish team, on this achievement! With her Peruvian team , Edith came second , behind the Guatemalan team .

• rphyrin explained the situation around Jakarta following the recent Anak Krakatau eruption, while showing how OpenStreetMap data is being used in an early warning system to alert people about the areas expected to be affected by volcanic ash. Anak Krakatau, meaning ‘child of Krakatau’, is an active volcano in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra that emerged from the caldera left by the catastrophic 1883 Krakatau eruption, which killed an estimated 35,000 people.

Local chapter news

• Katja Haferkorn reported ► that the FOSSGIS e.V. networking meeting took place on 2 September, with 25 participants joining the online networking platform. The next networking meeting will be held on 9 December 2026.

Events

• Are you a Stadia Maps customer? They just announced that they’re sponsoring local meet-ups to align with their core values of providing fair, transparent treatment for developers.

• Christoph Hormann shared a general commentary on the State of the Map 2026 conference in Paris, which he had recently attended.

• State of the Map Asia 2026 was held in Osaka, Japan, on 6 and 7 September.

OSM research

• Maurizio Napolitano wrote ► about ‘Stress in bici’, an experimental map based on OpenStreetMap that shows bicycle routes in Italy, colour-coded according to stress level. The development of the platform is also described in a research paper, ‘TS-BikePlan: A Data-Driven Tool for Enhancing Cycling Infrastructure and Safety’, published in the Journal of Urban Technology .

• Giuliano Cornacchia et al. have studied the recommended routes given by software navigation services and found out that as adoption increases, route diversity declines. Further, traffic and emissions converge onto fewer roads leading to lesser benefits (which eventually turn negative over a certain threshold) in terms of CO₂ emissions and traffic load. For the purposes of this study, the road networks were sourced from OpenStreetMap.

• The OSM Road Monitor team presented their work at SotM 2026 in Paris. By combining community-driven mapping with independent Earth observation data, the project aims to support more reliable and timely road information.

Maps

• Continuing the discussion around the recent UN shift from the Mercator to the Equal Earth projection, the OpenStreetMap community on Reddit has started discussing whether OSM should make the switch as well. Meanwhile, back in 2025, also prompted by a discussion about OSM map projections, Andy Townsend had already shown us that anyone can render OSM data in whatever projection they want.

• Mathias has published a map, ‘Polizeikarte’ , which brings together public press releases from German police authorities. It shows around 63,600 incidents from 260 locations across 14 federal states. Geocoding is handled by Nominatim, whilst the visualisation is provided by MapLibre GL JS using tiles from OpenFreeMap. Official reference layers can be overlaid, such as the accident atlas from the statistical offices, which contains 585,815 accidents from 2018 to 2025. The project is non-commercial and is not affiliated with any public authority.

Open Data

• Iconem has recently updated terrain-viewer, an app made to ingest, style, and render open-data terrain-sources for relief visualisation, feature detection, and mapping! They’re using it to detect archaeological sites, and there is some overlap with mapping landmarks within OSM from terrain sources, whether public worldwide like Mapterhorn, or national, since the tool can ingest custom national mapping agencies data sources.

Software

• Stadia Maps explained the distinction between forward geocoding and reverse geocoding and how choosing the right endpoint and parameters can make a big difference for any application.

• Strongly motivated by the urge to avoid getting a speeding ticket, Moonshot Studios GmbH have developed YouSpeed, a mobile intelligent speed-assistance app powered by OpenStreetMap speed-limit tags, area context, and daily diffs. Other apps of Moonshot Studios include Woladen (where to charge your electric car) and Tankzeit (best time to fuel up your car).

• rphyrin has made ‘ivebeen_here’, a platform for OSM users to share their personal stories about particular places.

Programming

• Agasta08 published the full report for their 2026 Google Summer of Code project, ‘Category Support in Nominatim’, thanking mentors Sarah Hoffmann and Marc Tobias, as well as OpenCage for sponsoring the development server used for the planet-scale database setup. Agasta explained how the category model has been implemented in Nominatim.

• Inspired by a discussion at the recent State of the Map, rphyrin tried out ‘Photon’, an open-source geocoder built for OpenStreetMap data, and built a custom front end that allows users to copy the coordinates of search results.

Releases

• OsmAnd released version 5.4 for iOS with a redesigned My Places interface, a rebuilt Plan a Route tool, and a new Astronomy plugin. The Android release came with a refreshed Search UI, the ability to attach media to Favorites, and 3D Buildings with roof shapes.

• Altilunium LocationPad v26.9.5 has been released – a web app for marking, labeling, and revisiting places on an OpenStreetMap-based map.

• Sourtest v26.9.6 has been released.

• The August 2026 release of Organic Maps has been released, introducing several new features, including multi-selection for bookmarks and tracks, a CarPlay dashboard, the ability to hide tracks on the map, and more readable share links.

Did you know that …

• … the recent ChatGPT update can now show OpenStreetMap-based map data based on your chat query, complete with proper OpenStreetMap attribution?

OSM in the media

• Brian Bergstrom has launched Dulcet GIS, a podcast about cartography and civic mapping. The first episode covers the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Equal Earth projection and sets it alongside the executive order renaming Lake Ontario, noting that OpenStreetMap was the only major map that did not change the name. The episode explained the on the ground rule and how disputed names are handled in the data model, and closed by pointing listeners to OSM-based apps and to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.

• The latest event of the Ingolstadt Citizens’ Network was held ► on Sunday 6 September, focusing on the theme ‘Navigation using OpenStreetMap data’. The event demonstrated how OpenStreetMap can be used in everyday life, which apps are based on it, and how people can contribute to improving the maps themselves. The event was free and open to everyone, with no prior knowledge required.

Other “geo” things

• The United Nations General Assembly has voted by an overwhelming majority in favour of adopting a world map based on the 2018 Equal Earth projection, which more accurately reflects the actual size of countries and continents, moving away from the Mercator projection. In New York, 164 states voted in favour of the resolution, which was sponsored by Togo and backed by the African Union. The United States was the only country to vote against ► it, describing the initiative as an ‘ideological agenda’. Six countries abstained.

• Scientists, led by space physicist Endawoke Yizengaw of The Aerospace Corporation in the US, have discovered that the solar flares of 11 November 2025 caused widespread, coast-to-coast disturbances in the atmosphere across the continental US. The disturbances could potentially throw GNSS positioning off by more than 10 metres in some places, the researchers say, significant enough to disrupt precision agriculture and autonomous vehicles.

• After announcing that Lake Ontario would continue to be called that on their maps, the MapQuest app went to number one for navigation on the iOS App Store in the US.

• Maggie Downs, of the BBC, visited Vienna’s Globe Museum, the only public museum in the world dedicated entirely to globes.

• Oliver Bünte, of Heise, reported that the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit has tested a quantum sensor-based flight navigation system over the Pacific that allows an aircraft’s position to be determined precisely without relying on GNSS. Instead of relying on signals from navigation satellites, the system detects changes in the Earth’s natural magnetic field and creates a magnetic field map from these measurements. Based on this map, the system can determine an aircraft’s position entirely independently of GNSS signals, weather, and visibility conditions.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
🇩🇰	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-09-13
🇬🇧	Greater London	1 Cabot Square, 7th Floor, Canary Wharf E14 4QJ	EAW Volunteering Event	2026-09-14
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-09-14
🇪🇸	Madrid	Online	Mappy Hour OSM España	2026-09-15
			Missing Maps London Mid-Month for Advanced Mappers (no training provided) (Online) [eng]	2026-09-15
🇺🇸	San Francisco	Near BART 24th St. Mission station	Bay Area WikiSalon	2026-09-15
🇫🇷	Lyon	Tubà	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon	2026-09-15
🇩🇪	Bonn	Dotty’s	204. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-09-15
🇩🇪	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-09-15
🇦🇹	Stainach-Pürgg	Online	22. Österreichischer OSM-Stammtisch (online)	2026-09-15
🇺🇸	San Jose	Online	South Bay Map Night	2026-09-15
🇩🇪		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-09-15
🇨🇭	St. Gallen	Rosenbergstrasse 59, 9000 St.Gallen	Map The Climate! Ein Mapathon	2026-09-16
🇫🇷		MJC de vienne	Réunion du groupe local de Vienne	2026-09-16
🇩🇪	Köln	Lokal K, Hackländer Straße 2, Köln-Ehrenfeld	OSM Stammtisch Köln	2026-09-16
🇫🇷	Nantes		COntrib’atelier	2026-09-16
🇺🇸	San Francisco	Et al.	A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations Between Eric Theise, Gusty Winds May Exist, Ron Heglin, and Petra Zélie	2026-09-16
🇩🇪	Karlsruhe	Schwarzer Kater	Stammtisch Karlsruhe	2026-09-16
🇩🇪	Kiel	Kieler Innovations- und Technologiezentrum	OSM auf der Kielux 2026	2026-09-18 - 2026-09-19
			OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting	2026-09-18
🇮🇹	Catania	Centro Atena, via Fimia 34, 95128 Catania (CT)	Modifichiamo Wiki e OSM insieme! - Catania	2026-09-18
🇮🇳	Mumbai	Lokhandwala Garden, Andheri	OSM Mumbai Mapping Party No.14 (Andheri)	2026-09-19
🇮🇳	Delhi	Too Mikkii Tapas, South Extension	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.31 (South Extension)	2026-09-20
🇪🇸	Madrid	Online	Mappy Hour OSM España	2026-09-22
🇬🇧	Derby	The Brunswick, Railway Terrace, Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up	2026-09-22
🇩🇪	Berlin	Online	OSM-Verkehrswende #79	2026-09-22
🇮🇹	Catania	Piazza Roma, Catania (Punto di incontro)	Mappiamo le piste ciclabili - Catania	2026-09-22
🇫🇷	Nantes	Le Wagon Nantes	OpenStreetMap, la carte à la carte !	2026-09-23
🇩🇪	Hannover	Kuriosum	Stammtisch	2026-09-23
🇩🇪	Würzburg	FabLab Würzburg	Würzburger OSM-Treffen	2026-09-23
🇬🇧	City of Westminster	Blue Posts pub	London pub meet-up	2026-09-23
			Pravidelný Missing Maps CZ-SK online Mapathon	2026-09-24
🇧🇷		100% online	🇧🇷 Lançamento de livros sobre mapeamento colaborativo	2026-09-24
🇩🇪	Freiburg im Breisgau	CCCFR, Adlerstr. 12 a, Freiburg/Br.	OSM-Treffen Freiburg/Br.	2026-09-24
🇮🇳	Bengaluru	NIMHANS Convention Center	OSM India @ IndiaFOSS 2026	2026-09-25 - 2026-09-27
			UN Mappers Mappy Hour	2026-09-25
🇲🇽	Torreón	Universidad Tecnológica de Torreón	Conferencia “OpenStreetMap: Datos abiertos y más”	2026-09-25
🇲🇽	Torreón	Universidad Tecnológica de Torreón	Taller “Mapeando mi entorno”	2026-09-25
🇩🇪	Düsseldorf	Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2026	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)	2026-09-25
🇩🇪	Karlsruhe	Geofabrik, Amalienstraße 44, 76133 Karlsruhe	Karlsruhe Hack Weekend September 2026	2026-09-26 - 2026-09-27
🇫🇷	Nantes	Le Wagon Nantes	OpenStreetMap, la balade de la data	2026-09-26
			Sudan Solidarity Series	2026-09-26
🇸🇪	Uppsala	Datorföreningen Update	Mapping meetup in Uppsala	2026-09-27
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-09-28

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, MatthiasMatthias, Rob Yoegel, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, tkk.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

27/08/2026-02/09/2026

Mapping campaigns

• Hiki introduced the Deutsche Bahn Metadata Cleanup project, an effort to improve the quality of OpenStreetMap data around German railway stations.

• Denmark’s OpenStreetMap community has made mapping accessible parking spaces its September 2026 project, encouraging contributors to survey and add missing spaces nationwide to improve the country’s free accessibility data.

Community

• Bigbug21 blogged on the current state of defibrillator mapping in OpenStreetMap, concluding that much has been achieved, but there is still plenty of work to be done.

• While attending State of the Map 2026, Juminet noticed a decline in the influence of big tech companies within OpenStreetMap, suggesting a shift back toward the volunteer contributions that formed the heart of the project in its early days. This contrasted with his experience at State of the Map 2018, when major technology companies were investing heavily in OpenStreetMap mapping.

• Anne-Karoline Distel showed how to map disused fish weirs on OpenStreetMap.

• Rawaz has mapped population data from Iraq’s 2024 census onto OSM administrative boundaries, covering admin levels 2 through 6.

• rphyrin praised Stylus Labs Maps after SotM 2026 as the best mobile OpenStreetMap vector map app they have tried.

• rphyrin plans to share his experiences from attending the global State of the Map 2026 online. He is still writing about the first day, with the remaining days a work in progress.

• Vishal Kumar shared several insights on the role of AI in mapping, from State of the Map US 2026, held 11 to 13 June.

Local chapter news

• OpenStreetMap US has published its August 2026 monthly newsletter, featuring the OSM US team heading to Paris for State of the Map 2026, an upcoming September Mappy Hour in collaboration with Foursquare, and the announcement of its newest Charter Project, OldInsuranceMaps.

Events

• [1] Volker Krause wrote about his attendance at SotM 2026 in Paris.

• A 360° version of the SotM2026 group photo is now online on Panoramax!

• The official PeerTube channel of State of the Map 2026 can be found here.

• Muki Haklay has shared his impressions of attending State of the Map 2026 in Paris. Muki, Professor of Geographical Information Science at the UCL Department of Geography, won the IEEE Pervasive Computing’s Test of Time Award for his 2008 paper on OpenStreetMap.

Education

• Lucy Kago reported, as a UN Mappers’ ambassador, that UN Mappers Kenya has completed its first ever Youth Climate Mapping Externship, a seven-week virtual programme designed to equip young Kenyans with real geospatial tools and apply them to climate challenges in Nairobi. Nineteen university students participated in the programme. The initiative had the support of IVIDES DATA (as a full sponsor), GeoMind Solutions and Geospatial Developers (as technical partners), and Community Mappers Kibera (as community partner). You can see the results on the UN Mappers’ blog.

Humanitarian OSM

• HOTOSM interviewed the CoMaps team about how the app was used to help rescuers after the earthquakes in Venezuela.

Maps

• Cody Blatt has created DepthScout, a depth-mapping platform designed to aid fishing, which uses shoreline data from OpenStreetMap.

• Map4 has released a free trial version, limited to 50 queries per day, of their US telecom fibre intelligence dashboard, built on top of OpenStreetMap basemap data.

• The Plataforma latinoamericana y del caribe por la justicia climática (Latin American and Caribbean platform for climate justice) maintains ► a uMap for mapping ‘false solutions’ to the climate crisis, those which claim to advance the protection of the planet and its inhabitants through approaches that include deception, technical shortcomings, so-called technological innovation, and rhetoric but which perpetuate consumption and the hoarding of wealth as we know it. The initiative is a collaboration ► of organisations from 15 Latin American countries.

OSM in action

• The California Ocean and Coastal Monitoring Inventory is an interactive dashboard of ocean and coastal monitoring programmes operating within 12 nautical miles of the California coast, using basemap data from OpenStreetMap.

Open Data

• The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre tooted that it is making its archive of Landsat data accessible ►, with support from the Technical University of Munich and the German Aerospace Centre.

Software

• Ashuttl has made linecast, a free open-source collection of terminal apps for weather, radar, sunshine, moon data, tides, and maps that uses public data sources including OpenStreetMap-derived vector data.

• Inspired by a recent Mapterhorn talk at State of the Map 2026, rphyrin has developed a web app that accepts coordinates pasted from JOSM and displays an interactive 3D terrain visualisation. The app can help JOSM users better understand the three-dimensional geographic context of the area they are currently mapping.

Programming

• Developer NameError has built Draw.city, a US geography game where players draw circles on a map to estimate populations and explore census demographics and OpenStreetMap points of interest.

• rphyrin has experimented with Sourdough to build a mobile-friendly vector map that treats roads uniformly and prioritises displaying as many mapped points of interest as possible, especially at high zoom levels.

• An agentic bot (Claude Code) ’explained’ ‘its’ approach to filling in Belgium’s national secondary road route relations on OpenStreetMap in an OSM Diary entry. The community’s response to the edits can be judged from the posts in the OSM Community forum thread.

Did you know that …

• … a curated collection of all European E-roads, an international network of major roads connecting countries across Europe, is mapped in OSM?

Other “geo” things

• Natsuhei Eno, a Senior Policy Officer at the Tokyo Foundation, published an article on the Foundation’s blog discussing what supports regional information infrastructure. Featuring Associate Professor Yasuyuki Matsumoto , of Setsunan University, who researches civic activities using OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia (such as Wikipedia Town and mapping parties), the article highlighted the importance of citizens participating not merely as recipients but as contributors to local information.

• Ryan Christoffel reported that Apple Maps is now showing advertisements to their customers; they will appear both as suggested places in the map and in the search result list with a little blue ‘ad’ text next to them.

• Kaio Bárbara has developed climateBR, a software package that provides tools for downloading, processing, and analysing historical meteorological data from Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology.

• Science Daily reported that NASA has successfully tested a system that allows satellites to navigate without GNSS by using other spacecraft and debris as landmarks in orbit.

• Neha Arora and Aboudy Kreidieh, of Google Research, reported that coordinating a small fraction of navigation routes in Google Maps can measurably improve driving speeds and reduce emissions across an entire city.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India - Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-09-05
	大阪市	中崎町ホール Nakazakicho HALL, Salon de AmanTo天人 (Osaka)	State of the Map Asia 2026	2026-09-06 - 2026-09-07
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #92	2026-09-07
	Madrid	Online	Mappy Hour OSM España	2026-09-08
	Braunschweig	Stratum 0	Braunschweiger Mappertreffen im Stratum 0 Hackerspace	2026-09-08
	Hamburg	Voraussichtlich: “Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-09-08
		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-09-08
	Tours	Étape 84	Rencontre locale de Touraine	2026-09-09
	Berlin	Kastanienallee 7-9, 10435 Berlin	219. OSM-Stammtisch Berlin-Brandenburg	2026-09-10
	München	WikiMUC	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-09-10
	Bochum	Das Labor, Alleestraße 50, Bochum	OSM-Treffen Bochum	2026-09-10
	Zürich		191. OSM-Stammtisch Zürich	2026-09-11
	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-09-13
	Delhi	Too Mikki Tapas, South Extension	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.32 (South Extension)	2026-09-13
	Greater London	1 Cabot Square, 7th Floor, Canary Wharf E14 4QJ	EAW Volunteering Event	2026-09-14
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-09-14
			Missing Maps London Mid-Month for Advanced Mappers (no training provided) (Online) [eng]	2026-09-15
	San Francisco	Near BART 24th St. Mission station	Bay Area WikiSalon	2026-09-15
	Lyon	Tubà	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon	2026-09-15
	San Jose	Online	South Bay Map Night	2026-09-15
	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-09-15
	Bonn	Dotty’s	204. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-09-15
	Stainach-Pürgg	Online	22. Österreichischer OSM-Stammtisch (online)	2026-09-15
		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-09-15
	St. Gallen	Rosenbergstrasse 59, 9000 St.Gallen	Map The Climate! Ein Mapathon	2026-09-16
	Köln	Lokal K, Hackländer Straße 2, Köln-Ehrenfeld	OSM Stammtisch Köln	2026-09-16
	Nantes		COntrib’atelier	2026-09-16
		MJC de vienne	Réunion du groupe local de Vienne	2026-09-16
	Kiel	Kieler Innovations- und Technologiezentrum	OSM auf der Kielux 2026	2026-09-18 - 2026-09-19

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, mcliquid.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

20/08/2026-26/08/2026

Mapping

• In early August, v7.1.0 of the iD tagging schema was released, bringing new features to iD, GoMap!!, EveryDoor, and other editors. It includes multiple new presets (for example, for rooftop solar thermal collectors and building=tent), marks some fields as openinghours-like, new values in fields such as cuisine, some region-specific tweaks, many better icons, fixes destination fields, and stops asking translators to translate the same phrase twice in many places, also better documentation, better repository structure, and many other improvements.

Community

• A poll by Mateusz Konieczny asks which improvements to iD presets are especially wanted.

• Sven Geggus discussed how to integrate data from Nomady, an Airbnb-like booking portal for small private campsites, into OpenStreetMap and OpenCampingMap.

• Rphyrin prepared for the State of the Map 2026, which took place in Paris and online from 28 to 30 August 2026.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The OpenStreetMap Foundation announced that Proton AG has been recognised as a Platinum Corporate Member, following two donations over the past two years, totalling around €70,000.

Local chapter news

• FOSSGIS tooted that the FOSSGIS Conference is seeking a host venue for 2028. Interested parties can submit applications to host FOSSGIS 2028 by email until 16 October 2026. They also welcome expressions of interest in hosting future events, such as FOSSGIS 2029 or FOSSGIS 2030.

• OpenStreetMap US announced that the OldInsuranceMaps project has joined YouthMappers, Yesterdays, and OpenHistoricalMap as an OSM US Charter Project.

Events

• ^[1] You can visit the page featuring the amazing posters which are being presented at State of the Map 2026.

OSM research

• Radim Štampach et al. have assessed the performance of the fAIr mapping environment (we reported earlier) compared with manual mapping in JOSM. They concluded that fAIr reduced the performance gap between novice and experienced contributors but introduced AI-related errors, while manual mapping in JOSM was faster and more accurate overall.

Maps

• Mobi Mapr built ► a visual dashboard to analyse the accessibility of ice cream parlours in Germany, using OpenStreetMap data.

OSM in action

• OK Lab Flensburg have developed ‘Open City Planner’, an interactive city planning GIS application for Flensburg’s city centre, powered by OpenStreetMap data.

Software

• The Prototype Fund is offering a new funding line aimed at young individual developers or small teams residing in Europe, focusing on open-source software infrastructure or data security.

• Stadia Maps explained their initiative around reworking their cartography from the ground up. There are some details about their recent overhaul of water name labeling.

Programming

• Yassa9 explained how to geolocate a photograph using OpenStreetMap data, geometry analysis, and CUDA GPU programming.

Did you know that …

• … the Valhalla router can route through pedestrian areas? OSRM has it too; after a pull request, which started in May 2025, was recently merged.

• …. r/Fahrrad invited the German cycling community on Reddit to improve the data quality of Komoot, Strava, and Bikerouter by contributing to OpenStreetMap through the StreetComplete app?

• … there’s a discussion on the OSM Wiki about mapping the Moon using the same principles as OpenStreetMap?

OSM in the media

• Ivan Nechaev, of Georgia Today, reported that the Georgian OpenStreetMap community worked online with 2025 aerial imagery from the National Agency of Public Registry, tracing buildings, checking roads, and adding addresses in Ambrolauri (western Georgia) and the surrounding area.

Other “geo” things

• The Iconoclasistas celebrated 20 years of participatory mapping ►.

• Radio France Internationale reported ► on the digitalisation of documents (including maps, documents, and photos) related to the historic mineral exploration in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are archived in the AfricaMuseum. According to François Kervyn, a geologist and head of the museum’s Earth Sciences department, the documents were previously available only by special order for researchers, but digitisation is expected to make them more accessible.

• Shachar Maidenbaum has published a study analysing how Israel’s military GNSS spoofing tactics affect local people, eliciting reactions ranging from navigation apps being disrupted, to grocery deliveries being directed out of the country, and users of dating apps matching with people across borders.

• Jennifer Ouellette, of Ars Technica, reported that Japanese researchers have developed the muometric positioning system, an alternative to GNSS that uses cosmic-ray muons instead of radio signals. Muons are highly penetrating, charged particles constantly reaching Earth’s surface from different directions. By placing synchronised muon detectors at multiple locations and comparing the timing and directions of the same muons passing through them, the system can determine their relative positions. This could enable positioning underground, indoors, and underwater, where radio signals cannot penetrate effectively.

• NDR reported that Laura Hantschel, Lukas Hort, Annika Neumann, and Clara Mülle of ‘Pipapo Games’ have developed MapMap, a cartography-themed puzzle game, during their studies. The gaming community has responded enthusiastically to its release, noting a sudden emerging trend of cartography-themed games. They mentioned another recent example, ‘Beware of the Cartographer’, which focuses on mapping a mysterious land during the Age of Enlightenment, drawing borders between two warring kingdoms, meeting the locals, and balancing their demands with the requirements of the mission (we reported earlier).

• Duan Yuanqiang and others have updated their S2Coast-2023 dataset (version 3), the first global 10 m resolution coastline dataset derived from enhanced Sentinel-2 composite imagery, under a CC-BY 4.0 International licence. There are polyline and polygon features, modelled tide data for some places, and coastal examples. The OSM coastline dataset was used for validation. The article was published in Remote Sensing of Environment.

• Jules Rumeau has developed Scopus, an HD LiDAR viewer using IGN data that runs entirely in the browser. For a given area, the tool calculates the terrain hidden beneath vegetation and displays it side-by-side with aerial photography. Sunken lanes, low stone walls, ruined huts, and other features obscured by trees in standard imagery become visible within seconds.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
		Cité Descartes	State of the Map 2026	2026-08-28 - 2026-08-30
	Essen	Verkehrs- und Umweltzentrum	Essen OSM-Treffen	2026-08-28
	Bengaluru	Nagarabhavi	OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party	2026-08-29
	Jalpaiguri	Kadamtala Madrasa Math, DBC Road, Jalpaiguri	14th OpenStreetMap West Bengal Mapping Party + AnkushTheHero Day	2026-08-30
		Gurukripa, Sion	OSM Mumbai Mapping Party No.14 (Sion)	2026-08-30
	Uppsala	Datorföreningen Update	Mapping meetup in Uppsala	2026-08-30
	Hannover	Kuriosum	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover	2026-08-31
	Saint-Étienne	Zoomacom	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire	2026-08-31
	Heidelberg	DEZERNAT#16	Rhein-Neckar OSM Treffen	2026-08-31
	Salzburg	Bewohnerservice Elisabeth-Vorstadt	OSM-Treffpunkt	2026-09-01
	Münster	BRASSERIE Münster	OSM-Stammtisch Münster	2026-09-01
	San Jose	Online	South Bay Map Night	2026-09-01
			Missing Maps London Mapathon Beginner Friendly (with Training) (Online) [eng]	2026-09-01
	Brno		Kvartální OSM pivo - SOTM/2 CZ [Brno]	2026-09-02
	Praha	Přírodovědná fakulta Univerzity Karlovy	SOTM/2 CZ	2026-09-02
			OSM Indoor Meetup	2026-09-02
	Stuttgart	Biergarten Tschechen & Söhne	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen	2026-09-02
	Bordeaux	Aquilenet, 20 Rue Tourat, 33000 Bordeaux	Rentrée bordelaise du groupe local OpenStreetMap	2026-09-03
	Angers	L’Arrière Train, 3 rue de Frémur, Angers	Angers Rencontre mensuelle OpenStreetMap	2026-09-03
		Bar Le Schmilblik	Rencontre mensuelle des contributeurs Paris sud	2026-09-03
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India - Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-09-05
	Osaka	中崎町ホール Nakazakicho HALL, Salon de AmanTo天人 (Osaka)	State of the Map Asia 2026	2026-09-06 - 2026-09-07
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #92	2026-09-07
	Braunschweig	Stratum 0	Braunschweiger Mappertreffen im Stratum 0 Hackerspace	2026-09-08
	Madrid	Online	Mappy Hour OSM España	2026-09-08
	Hamburg	Voraussichtlich: “Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-09-08
		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-09-08
	München	WikiMUC	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-09-10
	Bochum	Das Labor, Alleestraße 50, Bochum	OSM-Treffen Bochum	2026-09-10
	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-09-13
	New Delhi	Outside Delhi	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.32 (Outside Delhi)	2026-09-13
	Greater London	1 Cabot Square, 7th Floor, Canary Wharf E14 4QJ	EAW Volunteering Event	2026-09-14
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-09-14

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, Mateusz Konieczny, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

13/08/2026-19/08/2026

Mapping

• The proposal for revising lgbtq=* , authored by Spughetti, aims to make tagging of LGBTQ+ features more accurate. It does so by deprecating keys that don’t provide added information over existing keys, changing the formatting of keys, and introducing new sub-keys. The RFC period started on 12 August 2026.

A proposal, authored by Biff, suggests extending the highway=traffic_mirror node with a relation type=traffic_mirror that specifies how the traffic mirror is intended to be used for the specific highway. It extends the already defined role=from and role=to members of the relation, provides better guidance for their meaning and the selection of their location, and also covers additional situations such as bidirectional mirrors on curves and dead-angle mirrors. Additionally, the proposal defines a new and recommended role=visible member to indicate relevant ways (or nodes) that can be seen through the traffic mirror. The RFC period is open until 12 September 2026.

Community

• Rphyrin developed Warlok, a web tool for identifying the top OSM contributors in a specific local neighbourhood.

• Rphyrin compared the user experience of several OpenStreetMap-based routing apps, including brouter, OSRM, and Valhalla, to calculate the distance of an afternoon bicycle trip he had just taken.

• Rtnf explained how to correct JOSM’s satellite imagery offset using survey control marks.

• 9_tab wrote an OSM User Diary entry about Via Crucis in Switzerland (worship=stations_of_the_cross). The entry explains what to look out for to find them, presents a list of routes along stations of the cross in Ticino, Solothurn and others cantons of Switzerland, and describes how to map them.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The submission phase of community questions to the board candidates closed on 22 August. An official set of questions will be added by the facilitator on 6 September 2026.

Local chapter news

• Maggie Cawley has recapped the March Local Chapters and Communities Congress (LCCC), a two-hour virtual gathering of over 30 participants from Italy, Indonesia, Greece, the USA, Belgium, Kenya, Canada, Brazil, and Malawi, sharing updates from their local OSM communities. The OSMF Board also joined to report on a Sovereign Tech Fund grant of €384,000, a new local chapter in Colombia, and plans for a Belgian subsidiary, before attendees worked through discussion prompts on what makes OSM hard to join and what keeps mapping communities going. The next in-person LCCC session will take place at State of the Map on 28 August in Paris. You can also join a monthly LCCWG meeting. Contact local@osmfoundation.org.

Events

• Christopher Lorenz and Oliver Rudzick reported ► that FOSSGIS set up a stand at this year’s Maker Faire in Hannover and organised a stand for the OpenStreetMap project at FrOSCon in Sankt Augustin.

• The French National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information posted ► on its website about the State of the Map 2026: ‘For the first time in twenty-two years, the OpenStreetMap community’s global conference will be held in France, in Champs-sur-Marne, near Paris, on the last weekend of August!’

Maps

• ^[1] Following the launch of the OSM Skeleton methodology (we reported earlier), Séverin Ménard wanted to illustrate it with an example by resolving the main reports in an area of Senegal, where the demo is currently being deployed, in order to achieve a first milestone in data homogeneity. He also created a statistics dashboard to track the progress for each type of report between 5 and 19 August, when he was mapping for this case study.

• Sylvain Machefert has developed Boîtes-à-livres ►, an OpenStreetMap-powered, collaborative database of public bookcases in France.

• Nicolas Wurtz tooted that the OpenStreetMap France community recently released Tchoo, a web map that shows old railway lines from around the world in a retro style.

• Papamap is a web map that displays locations tagged with changing_table=yes, specifying the availability of changing tables where parents can change their babies’ nappies and highlighting which parent may be able to do it. The map has data from 11 countries in Europe and those places are colour-coded by location. It also includes a related MapComplete theme and an upcoming StreetComplete quest to improve the completeness of tagging information regarding changing tables.

OSM in action

• Elias Probst tooted that OpenStreetMap data is once again being used to coordinate firefighting efforts in Hürtgenwald, Germany.

• Shannon Connellan reported on DeFlock Maps, a crowdsourced app aiming to promote ‘surveillance transparency’ by pinpointing the locations of automated licence plate readers on a map.

• DVLPLONDON developed ► Hop Earth, a multiplayer, browser-based racing game that uses real-life street data from OpenStreetMap as its race tracks.

Software

• Uggla released AquaTrace version 0.5.0, which analyses GPX routes and displays nearby drinking water points using OpenStreetMap data, along with distance, elevation gain and loss, and an elevation profile.

• DMH_AU has built the GPX Reference Point Generator, a web tool for generating GPX reference point files based on local government survey control marker plaques, helping OSM armchair-mappers to map more accurately.

Programming

• Stadia Maps explained how to use MapLibre React Native to write map code once and deploy it on both iOS and Android.

Did you know that …

• … Thomas developed Fedihood? This is a Fediverse-based microblogging platform that lets users connect with other users in the same city, powered by the ActivityPub protocol and OpenStreetMap.

• … the OpenJUMP is an open source geographic information system written in Java? It was developed primarily in Canada and is developed and maintained by a group of volunteers from around the globe.

• … there is a table that summarises the values of admin_level for various countries around the world (related to administrative levels)? And this is related to each country’s organisation? You can also check out an interesting discussion in this Hacker News thread.

• … deleting an OSM object does not actually erase the object from the OSM database? Instead, it creates a new version of that object whose state is visible=false. The object’s ID, previous versions, tags, geometry, and history remain available.

• … Steve Coast, OpenStreetMap’s creator, delivered a special keynote ‘OpenStreetMap (almost) at 20: Reflections and Future Predictions’ at the State of the Map Europe 2023?

OSM in the media

• CHIP has rated ► OsmAnd+ as a ‘good’ navigation app.

Other “geo” things

• USGS has released several visualisations related to the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck western Colombia on 10 August 2026.

• The National Geographic Institute of Spain has published ► a web portal providing information on the solar eclipses that will be visible from Spain in 2026, 2027, and 2028.

• yle noted ► that Yandex Maps has pioneered a new method for concealing military installations in satellite images; instead of blurring and pixelation, it now uses retouching with surrounding objects, such as forests.

• Lindsey Lanquist reported that the Google team recently improved the GNSS on their Pixel Watch 5 by using three-dimensional models of buildings from Google Maps to cut down on errors caused by signal interference, as well as leveraging Google’s existing network of global GNSS reference stations.

• Hans van der Kwast explained how to publish a QGIS project to the Mergin Maps platform, making it accessible online.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
	Potsdam	MachBar	Potsdamer Mappertreffen × 218. OSM-Stammtisch Berlin-Brandenburg	2026-08-21
	Stadtgebiet Bremen	Online und im Hackerspace Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2026-08-24
	Berlin	Online	OSM-Verkehrswende #78	2026-08-25
	Würzburg	FabLab Würzburg	Würzburger OSM-Treffen	2026-08-26
	Düsseldorf	Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2026	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)	2026-08-26
	Wien	Schlupfwinkel (Kleine Neugasse 10, 1040 Wien)	79. Wiener OSM-Stammtisch	2026-08-26
			OpenStreetMap West Bengal Mapping Party + AnkushTheHero Day	2026-08-27
		Cité Descartes	State of the Map 2026	2026-08-28 - 2026-08-30
	Essen	Verkehrs- und Umweltzentrum	Essen OSM-Treffen	2026-08-28
	Uppsala	Datorföreningen Update	Mapping meetup in Uppsala	2026-08-30
	Hannover	Kuriosum	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover	2026-08-31
	Heidelberg	DEZERNAT#16	Rhein-Neckar OSM Treffen	2026-08-31
	Salzburg	Bewohnerservice Elisabeth-Vorstadt	OSM-Treffpunkt	2026-09-01
	Münster	BRASSERIE Münster	OSM-Stammtisch Münster	2026-09-01
			Missing Maps London Mapathon Beginner Friendly (with Training) (Online) [eng]	2026-09-01
	Praha	Přírodovědná fakulta Univerzity Karlovy	SOTM/2 CZ	2026-09-02
	Brno		Kvartální OSM pivo - SOTM/2 CZ [Brno]	2026-09-02
			OSM Indoor Meetup	2026-09-02
	Stuttgart	Biergarten Tschechen & Söhne	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen	2026-09-02
	Bordeaux	Aquilenet, 20 Rue Tourat, 33000 Bordeaux	Rentrée bordelaise du groupe local OpenStreetMap	2026-09-03
	Angers	L’Arrière Train, 3 rue de Frémur, Angers	Angers Rencontre mensuelle OpenStreetMap	2026-09-03
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India - Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-09-05
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #92	2026-09-07

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, miurahr, renecha.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

06/08/2026-12/08/2026

Mapping

• SherbetS has proposed craft=meat_processing for small-scale facilities where hunters or animal owners bring a carcass to be cut into meat, as distinct from shop=butcher or industrial=slaughterhouse. RFC voting started on 30 July. The proposal grew out of an earlier discussion on how to tag deer processors, where commenters debated craft=butcher, man_made=works, and various animal-specific alternatives before settling on the more general wording. In the RFC thread, several contributors argued that craft=butcher would fit just as well and that ‘meat processing’ sounds too industrial in British English, while others worried the new tag could end up being used for large commercial plants too.

• Joost Schouppe started a discussion on differentiating police forces by government level (municipal, regional, national, gendarmerie, street warden), which grew into a formal RFC. The proposal defines police:branch=* with four values: gendarmerie, national_police, regional_police, and local_police, to classify which government level operates a police feature, alongside a separate police:specialisation key for topics like traffic or canine units. In the RFC thread, commenters questioned the ‘branch’ naming and whether four generic values can fit countries with far more complex police structures, such as Germany or Italy. The OSM Wiki Proposals account tooted that voting had opened, but Schouppe cancelled it a day later after reviewers asked for country examples and clearer definitions, sending both keys back to RFC.

The OSM Wiki Proposals account tooted that voting had opened on fanfouer’s service supplies proposal. The proposal introduces line_management=service_supply to mark nodes where an individual household’s service drop or lateral taps a main utility line, plus an occupancy=* key to count connected supplies without mapping each one. The voting runs until 30 August. The idea was first floated a year ago as a way to ease mapping of overhead wires in dense residential streets, and the proposal has since been fleshed out with examples for power and telecommunications. Early votes are split with one voter having opposed extending line_management to non-power utilities before a separate pipeline proposal exists, while another approved it as filling a real gap.

Mapping campaigns

• The OpenStreetMap Colombia Community is organising and coordinating on-the-ground mapping to identify damaged or destroyed buildings in the area affected by the earthquake in San Jose del Palmar (Colombia), with the support of UN Mappers and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). Emílio Mariscal has created a web map using uMap to support the mapping campaign, which is using the Chat Map. There are projects for collaborative mapping on the HOT Tasking Manager: #61980, #61914, and # 61320.

• Semir Kahrimanovic has announced a new CompleteTheMap 2026 across Europe. New images from selected cities will be accepted from 10 August to 30 September with the sign-up deadline for entering the competition being 31 August.

• Italy’s OSM mapping community monthly project for August, ‘Restrizioni, Direzioni e cartelli’, is focusing on improving information on how to get to various places by including details for road navigation and better routing.

Community

• OpenStreetMap celebrated its 22nd birthday on 9 August and some well-known contributors to the OSM ecosystem responded with kind messages on social media: Yasmila Herrera (via Héctor Ortiz), the OSM LatAm community, Raquel Dezidério with the YouthMappers UFRJ, Dorothea Kazazi, Anne-Karoline Distel, and luiseme.

• Melany Ventura, a UI/UX designer, is the Trufi Association’s new Featured Volunteer, improving Trufi’s OSM-based journey planner apps, and more.

• In the latest episode of the Geomob Podcast, Dennis Luxen joined the show to discuss the history, and the technical and community-driven development of the Open Source Routing Machine, an open-source routing engine used in OpenStreetMap.

• Christoph Hormann commented on the recent discussion in the OpenStreetMap community regarding corporate influence on the project.

• Rphyrin is conducting a personal mapping campaign to add geolocated images to their corresponding OSM objects using the image=* tag. The results so far are being showcased through an Overpass Ultra query in a Mastodon post thread.

• Valère Déjo published an article on La Remuante, ‘A new cycle path on the map’, focusing on the city of Saint-Étienne (France), which is introducing new cycle paths and offering the opportunity to map them in OSM using Panoramax.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Grant Slater reported that he is physically installing a new OpenStreetMap tile render server in Dublin, kindly sponsored by QGIS, which is expected to make tile rendering faster on the GIS.

Events

• In the newest episode of the Projets Libres podcast, Benoît Peyon, a member of the organising committee for State of the Map 2026, was interviewed about the event.

• The 1st Global Convening on Informal and Shared Mobility (GloCon 2026) will take place in Bangkok from 26 to 28 October. OSM advocates can meet thought leaders improving transport systems worldwide.

• On 12 August the HOT Asia Pacific Hub held its quarterly Regional Mapathon Asia-Pacific. During the event they announced several upcoming Open Mapping Guru Pro+ events in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nepal, and India, and the upcoming October–November 2026 Open Mapping Guru Network recruitment cycle. You can read more details.

• Wikimedia Italia reported ► that the University of Trento, together with GFOSS.it, hosted FOSS4G-IT and OSMit 2026 from 9 to 11 July.

Maps

• Björn showcased Hoscy, a web map where users can compare prices at ad-hoc EV charging stations. Here, ‘ad-hoc charging’ means EV charging where you pay as you go without having a contract, subscription, or membership with the charging network.

• Jvaclavik announced the release of OpenClimbing 2.0, an open-source climbing guide built on OpenStreetMap and other open data. Since 2023, the OpenClimbing project has been developed alongside OsmAPP in a shared codebase, but the developers recently decided to fork it into a separate repository.

• Nicofr77 has combined OpenStreetMap cycle route data, with the official French cycle route reference, to identify bike-and-train loops between two stations, allowing people to cycle one way and return ► by train.

• Dieter Petereit reported ► that a Norwegian developer, operating under the pseudonym ‘Flightmussy_CEO’, is currently developing World Train Map, a curated atlas of notable passenger rail routes around the world, which currently showcases 1,269 railway routes.

• Renaud Zi has developed a free tool that simulates the recent solar eclipse for any location in Europe. It combines building and forest data from OSM with NASA data. It has been pointed out on the forum that a licence is missing, and that strictly speaking, the code that is available for viewing may not be freely reused.

OSM in action

• Pit Stop App is a mobile app that shows petrol stations, restaurants, accommodation, and must-see attractions at every exit ahead on America’s interstate highways. Powered by OpenStreetMap data, the app determines which interstate you’re on and the direction you’re travelling, then lists everything available at upcoming exits, sorted by the order in which you’ll reach them.

Software

• [1] Matt Whilden has developed ‘OSM Vexillophile’, a web app that helps OSM users complete all the flags on their ‘How Did You Contribute?’ page by finding MapRoulette, Osmose, or HOT Tasking Manager tasks in countries where they are still missing a flag.

• Devinius has built Knudli, a Flutter app that helps users discover playgrounds using OpenStreetMap data.

Programming

• Sarah Hoffmann announced, on the OSM Community forum, that she has lowered limits for clients to be automatically banned on overpass-api.de. She is going to ban apps completely if they receive a high number of HTTP 429 (Too many requests) or are hosted on a fast-deployment platform.

• Benjamin Altpeter has developed scripts to convert the iD editor’s presets for OpenStreetMap into JOSM presets. This lets users take advantage of JOSM’s powerful advanced features, while still benefiting from the familiar terms and aliases provided by iD presets, making it much easier to find the right preset, even if they don’t already know the correct OpenStreetMap tag.

Releases

• The team behind the OSM website are back with a recap of the latest changes. The month of July and a bit of August include an all-new notifications page, offering an alternative to the usual emails about new comments, followers, GPX uploads, notes, and diaries. Work has also be done to improve database backups, which in turn benefits the generation of weekly planet files. Moderators can now define zones with disabled anonymous notes themselves.

• Martin Raifer released OpenStreetMap iD version 2.42.0.

• Pavel Zbytovský announced the release of OsmAPP versions 1.8.0 and 1.9.0.

• Anders has announced there is a new beta version of the Mapillary app, which includes two new layers: ‘Best captures’ and ‘Captures needed’, new filters, and the option to display traffic signs and POI features on the map.

Did you know that …

• … Sybren A Stüvel recently learned about Touch Mapper? This is a web app that uses OpenStreetMap data to create printable 3D models of an area, allowing people with little or no vision to literally get a feel for the place.

• … Alex Hoferek presented the results of his research, on the profile of OSM corporate editors, at State of the Map 2024? The presentation details the characteristics of their activities, such as length of employment time and the most commonly mapped feature types, as well as the challenges these contributors faced in participating in the OSM ecosystem.

• … the ‘Sustainable Digitalisation’ community of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety, in collaboration with Wikimedia Germany and the Action Alliance for New Social Media, has published a practical guide titled ‘Free Knowledge’? Among other things, the guide introduces OpenStreetMap, and highlights various resources and ways to contribute to OSM.

OSM in the media

• In an interview with Heise, OSM contributor Bastian Greshake Tzovaras talked about how OpenStreetMap differs from commercial map providers and which niche OSM fills.

• Keith Storm explained his ‘Run Greenville Project’, a personal project to run every road and trail in Greenville County, South Carolina, USA, using the Wandrer app, which relies on OpenStreetMap data. He shared various remarkable experiences from the project, including getting featured by a local news station, becoming involved in a dispute with locals who were not particularly fond of strangers, discovering various historical sites, being swarmed by unidentified animals that eventually led him to undergo a full series of rabies vaccinations, and even encountering traces of crime scenes.

Other “geo” things

• Nigeria’s crude oil brings prosperity, but also environmental destruction and poverty. The book Black Gold: a blessing or a curse?, by Igbanibo Kubulaemugh Divine, used satellite data and real-life examples to reveal this downside.

• Through the UN Maps Learning Hub, UN Mappers is offering a self-training platform accessible to anyone and have released a new free QGIS training course.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
		Hochschule Rhein-Sieg	OSM auf der FrOSCon 2026 in Sankt Augustin	2026-08-15 - 2026-08-16
	Hannover	Hannover Congress Centrum	OSM auf der Maker Faire Hannover 2026	2026-08-15 - 2026-08-16
		Stadt- und Waagenmuseum Oschatz	Kartenwerkstatt Oschatz	2026-08-16
			OSM Chennai Mapping Party – Tambaram Market	2026-08-16
	Braunschweig	Stratum 0	Braunschweiger Mappertreffen im Stratum 0 Hackerspace	2026-08-18
			Missing Maps London Mid-Month for Advanced Mappers (no training provided) (Online) [eng]	2026-08-18
	Magdeburg	Netz39 e.V. , Leibnizstraße 32, 39104 Magdeburg	3. OSM Stammtisch Magdeburg	2026-08-18
	Bonn	Dotty’s	203. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-08-18
	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-08-18
	Derby	The Brunswick, Railway Terrace, Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up	2026-08-18
		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-08-18
	Karlsruhe	Vogelbräu Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe	2026-08-19
	Amsterdam	TomTom HQ	Maptime Amsterdam: 2026 Summertime Maptime	2026-08-20
	Potsdam	MachBar	Potsdamer Mappertreffen × 218. OSM-Stammtisch Berlin-Brandenburg	2026-08-21
	Stadtgebiet Bremen	Online und im Hackerspace Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2026-08-24
	Berlin	Online	OSM-Verkehrswende #78	2026-08-25
	Düsseldorf	Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2026	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)	2026-08-26
	Würzburg	FabLab Würzburg	Würzburger OSM-Treffen	2026-08-26
	Wien	Schlupfwinkel (Kleine Neugasse 10, 1040 Wien)	79. Wiener OSM-Stammtisch	2026-08-26
			OpenStreetMap West Bengal Mapping Party + AnkushTheHero Day	2026-08-27
		Cité Descartes	State of the Map 2026	2026-08-28 - 2026-08-30
	Essen	Verkehrs- und Umweltzentrum	Essen OSM-Treffen	2026-08-28
	Hannover	Kuriosum	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover	2026-08-31
	Hannover	Kuriosum	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover	2026-08-31
	Heidelberg	DEZERNAT#16	Rhein-Neckar OSM Treffen	2026-08-31

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, MatthiasMatthias, Nakaner, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Ted Johnson, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

30/07/2026-05/08/2026

Mapping campaigns

• Uber has proposed, on the OSM Community forum, an organised editing activity to improve pedestrian mapping in 21 countries. Various mappers criticise it due to a lack of details and because Uber has a poor track record in the UK.

Community

• Rphyrin made an Overpass Ultra script for viewing image=* tags in OpenStreetMap.

• MideaFind has used OpenStreetMap data to collect the locations of stores that might sell portable air conditioners.

• Andrea Grandi explained why Book Corners won’t sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap. Pieter Vander Vennet responded in his blog.

Imports

• Oscar Car Rental announced ► that they are planning an organised editing activity to add their 93 missing car rental locations in Germany, along with performing some data maintenance.

OSM research

• Marni Davis documented Atlanta’s immigrant population in the late 19th century, visualising their neighbourhoods on an OpenHistoricalMap basemap.

Maps

• ^[1] Victor Rotariu and his team are developing a live urban heat map that estimates street-level thermal conditions at a resolution of roughly 25 metres. This data will power a new ‘Cool’ routing mode. Rather than selecting only the fastest or shortest cycling route, Cool mode will identify the route with the lowest estimated heat exposure. The goal is simple: help cyclists avoid the hottest streets, enjoy a more comfortable ride, and arrive at their destination with less sweat on hot summer days.

OSM in action

• A 23-year-old student developer from South Korea has created a navigation app for finding shade covered areas, which has shot to the top of the App Store’s navigation apps. The app uses OpenStreetMap data to plot routes.

Software

• HeiGIT presented their latest update on the roadmap toward the new ohsome API 2.0, outlining the next steps in the evolution of the ohsome platform for analysing OpenStreetMap data. The update introduced planned developments, improvements, and future directions aimed at creating a more flexible, efficient, and sustainable API for OSM history data analytics.

Releases

• The CoMaps team published release 2026.07.16, which is now available via Codeberg, F-Droid, Google Play, and the iOS AppStore. This version adds a preview of turn-by-turn directions when creating a route, adds lane guidance and improved next turn descriptions for iOS/CarPlay, per-transport-mode routing options, support for more OSM tags, and many further bug fixes and improvements.

• Organic Maps July 2026 has been released, bringing a collection of bug fixes and general improvements.

• A note for mappers resolving notes: Organic Maps version 2026.07.15 has fixed a long-standing issue, where notes left inside large forest polygons and road lines would always move to the centre of the object. Notes are now added at the user’s click location.

• Tina announced that OsmAnd Astronomy, currently available in the OsmAnd Android 5.4 beta (on paid plans Maps+ and OsmAnd Pro), now includes tools for exploring solar and lunar events. Users can move through a timeline to preview upcoming astronomical events, check eclipse visibility from any location on Earth, and watch exactly how each solar or lunar eclipse will unfold before it actually occurs.

• HeiGIT reported the release of Ohsome-Planet version of 1.3.1, codename ‘Baarle-Hertog’. This tool is designed to facilitate the transformation of raw OpenStreetMap history data into the geoParquet format, making it more accessible for spatial data analysis.

Did you know that …

• … the OSM Apps Catalog allows you to browse a list of thousands of various map apps?

OSM in the media

• BRUZZ, a local newspaper in Brussels, commented ► on the rise in recent years of private swimming pools in residential neighbourhoods. They praised OSM volunteers for having mapped them and showed maps with their locations.

• Heise’s c’t Open Source Spotlight newsletter reported ► on CoMaps and interviewed OSM community member Bastian Greshake Tzovaras about CoMaps, OSM and free software in general.

Other “geo” things

• Google had integrated its AI image generator ‘Nano Banana 2’ into Google Earth. They removed it two days later after people started abusing it, as the BBC reported.

• The Times of India explained how Polynesian navigators crossed the Pacific Ocean by reading the stars, ocean swells, winds, birds, and clouds to find their way.

• In response to the recent news about Moroccan migrants crossing into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, OpenCage reshared their previously published geo-trivia posts about Spain and Morocco.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
		Online	Racha Mapping Party	2026-07-27 - 2026-08-09
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM’s 22nd Birthday × OSM India Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-08-08 - 2026-08-09
	臺北市	國立臺灣科技大學研揚大樓412-1教室	COSCUP 2026 State of the Map Taiwan 2026 / Wikidata Community Summit 2026	2026-08-09
	New Delhi	Indian Coffee House, Connaught Place	OSM’s 22nd Birthday × OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.30	2026-08-09
	大阪市	11F, Urban Net Midosuji Building, 4-2-13 Awajicho	OpenStreetMap関西カンファレンス2026 / OSM Kansai Conference 2026	2026-08-09
	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-08-09
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #91	2026-08-10
	Zürich	Bitwäscherei Zürich	190. OSM-Stammtisch Zürich	2026-08-11
	Hamburg	Voraussichtlich: “Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-08-11
		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-08-11
			Missing Maps Online Mapathon von Ärzte ohne Grenzen	2026-08-12
	München	Echardinger Einkehr	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-08-12
			UN Mappers Mappy Hour	2026-08-13
		Hochschule Rhein-Sieg	OSM auf der FrOSCon 2026 in Sankt Augustin	2026-08-15 - 2026-08-16
	Hannover	Hannover Congress Centrum	OSM auf der Maker Faire Hannover 2026	2026-08-15 - 2026-08-16
		Stadt- und Waagenmuseum Oschatz	Kartenwerkstatt Oschatz	2026-08-16
	Magdeburg	Netz39 e.V. , Leibnizstraße 32, 39104 Magdeburg	3. OSM Stammtisch Magdeburg	2026-08-18
			Missing Maps London Mid-Month for Advanced Mappers (no training provided) (Online) [eng]	2026-08-18
	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-08-18
	Bonn	Dotty’s	203. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-08-18
	Derby	The Brunswick, Railway Terrace, Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up	2026-08-18
		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-08-18
	Karlsruhe	Vogelbräu Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe	2026-08-19
	Amsterdam	TomTom HQ	Maptime Amsterdam: 2026 Summertime Maptime	2026-08-20
	Potsdam	MachBar	Potsdamer Mappertreffen	2026-08-21
	Stadtgebiet Bremen	Online und im Hackerspace Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2026-08-24

This weeklyOSM was produced by HeiGIT, MatthiasMatthias, Nakaner, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, TrickyFoxy, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

23/07/2026-29/07/2026

Mapping

• ^[1] Les Libres Géographes has shared a methodology called OSM Skeleton, which aims to reduce the heterogeneity of OpenStreetMap data to create a coherent and locally maintainable common dataset of geographic references. The approach systematically identifies, on a national scale, missing, incomplete, inaccurate, or obsolete features among those considered fundamental: place nodes, road network, and residential areas. It uses a hybrid feature called ‘urban areas’ for analytical purposes. In particular, it generates WMS layers of alerts, instruction pages for easily correcting them in JOSM or iD, tracking statistics, and also a score for the density of POIs in towns. Séverin Ménard will present it at the upcoming SotM in Paris.

Community

• ASRvwde shared a collection of various mapping tools that support OSM mapping activities.

• Calvin Amevienku, YouthMappers Regional Ambassador to Ghana, has coordinated his first end-of-year mapathon under his working plan for 2026. The initiative organised training for 25 YouthMappers on how to use JOSM and the HOT Tasking Manager. The activity was sponsored by the IVIDES DATA, from Brazil, and the organisers hope the next steps will help improve the mapping skills of the YouthMappers chapter at the University of Education - Winneba.

• Nile_thebest explained that his passion for mapping on OpenStreetMap has never really faded since he first registered more than 11 months ago.

• Christoph Hormann has written a blog post responding to a OSM Community forum discussion about the OSMF’s AI and chatbot policy, under which moderators may delete AI-generated text or images and have been advised to use the Pangram detection tool. He argues the controversy stems from combining moderator authority with technocratic platform management, leaving forum participants without the tools or experience to manage their own social interactions. Drawing on Usenet-era killfiles, he suggests LLM use by human participants would be less contentious if users could individually filter content rather than have it collectively regulated. He concludes that the dispute reflects an unconsidered attempt to centrally control what people write and read, instead of giving them individual freedom to manage it themselves.

• Rphyrin pondered the ethics of conducting large-scale mapathon campaigns after learning that, in a certain neighbourhood, the locals deliberately preferred to make internal navigation difficult for outsiders to increase the security of the neighbourhood’s residents.

Local chapter news

• OpenStreetMap US’s July 2026 newsletter has been published.

Events

• OSM US tooted that the SOTMUS 2026 videos are available on its YouTube channel. There are almost 60 videos available in the playlist.

OSM research

• Robert Klar and David Gundlegård applied machine learning to predict zonal travel demand using OSM-derived built environment features, including land use, points of interest, and road network attributes, combined with population estimates from WorldPop, in two case study cities: Stockholm and Norrköping. Their research shows that OSM features, particularly those related to residential land use, buildings, and POIs (e.g. companies, healthcare facilities, and public transportation), are strong predictors of zonal travel demand.

Maps

• EclipseMap is an interactive map by Alessio Zanol that allows users to explore the visibility of the solar eclipse on 12 August across Europe. The map shows whether the solar eclipse will be total or partial at a selected location. The app uses OpenStreetMap-based vector tiles from OpenFreeMap as its base map.

• The Agroecology Map is an interactive web map based on OpenStreetMap, maintained by Marcelo S Souza and Eduardo F Formighieri, which showcases agroecological initiatives, as well as records of places and practices. It is intended to promote the sharing of open knowledge and strengthen collaborative networks across different regions. The source is available on Codeberg.

• The Flosm Power Grid is a web map showing the global infrastructure of electricity grids, from high to low voltage, with substations and power plants, all based on OSM data. The elements can be visualised individually via a fold-out selection bar to the left of the map. It is maintained by 123map GmbH & Co.KG and hosted at 123map.de. You can see the set of tags used by this project on taginfo.

OSM in action

• Equidistance.io has analysed OpenStreetMap data and declared The Greene Man on Euston Road to be London’s most equidistant pub. Based on public transport journeys from where residents of all 33 London boroughs actually live, no borough requires more than 70 minutes to reach the pub, with a travel time difference of just 47 minutes between the nearest and furthest boroughs.

• Following Czechia, #geoweirdness turned its attention to proposed national mergers, such as ‘Pan-Iberism’ between Spain and Portugal. Today, the idea has lost momentum since both countries are now part of the EU.

• Denjam used OpenStreetMap data to answer the question: ‘What proportion of beauty salons in a particular city allow customers to book online without having to ring first’?

Software

• The openstreetmap-website project celebrated 20 years since the first commit with some old screenshots of a very different era.

• Soon, when uploading a GPX trace to OSM, you will no longer be able to choose some of the visibility levels, as the website development team is working to simplify and improve the GPX trace management system.

• OSM2CDR is a web service that exports OpenStreetMap data for any drawn area or administrative boundary into 62+ formats aimed at non-GIS users, CorelDRAW CDR, AutoCAD DWG/DXF, SVG, STL for 3D printing, and dozens of other formats, keeping map layers editable and clipping exports to administrative boundaries. The catalogue offers about 2.9 million ready to use admin areas in 193 countries. There is also a blog with rich content. The ODbL attribution is embedded in every export.

• OWL Places can now work in reverse: adding OpenStreetMap links to Wikidata.

Programming

• Juno Computers have developed Car Navigation, a navigation app for Linux systems. It uses OpenStreetMap data and services for place search and route planning, including Photon, Nominatim, OSRM, and Valhalla.

• Andy Townsend has updated his diary entry describing how to set up an Overpass API server, covering data for Britain and Ireland only (we reported earlier). The guide is a response to the ongoing overload of public Overpass servers and uses an actively maintained forked version of the Overpass software. The guide walks you through server setup on Hetzner cloud hardware, Apache configuration, compilation, and loading data from a Geofabrik extract. The post also links to other installation guides, including Brian Sperlongano’s guide and an earlier diary entry by Kai Johnson.

• Milan Janosov shared an urban data science reading list, including a hands-on path from your first OpenStreetMap query to city-scale spatial models.

Releases

• Baba version 1.22.1 for Panoramax contributions from Android has been released.

Did you know that …

• … BeMaps.es? BeMaps is a web-based mapping tool that allows you to create and share maps in three steps: upload data, select a map template, and publish or share with specific recipients. This tool offers pre-prepared data layers for regions around the world. BeMaps was developed by the GEOT (Geography) and IAAA (Information Systems) research groups at the University of Zaragoza, in collaboration with the company Geoslab. As well as a free version, there are paid plans available for educational purposes, non-profit organisations, and standard use.

• … Milan Janosov posted, on Substack, a short guide ‘OpenStreetMap vs Global Building Atlas (GBA) Explained’? It includes Python scripts to extract buildings from OSM and the GBA, a new dataset from the Technical University of Munich covering 2.75 billion buildings worldwide, derived from satellite imagery and deep learning (we reported earlier).

Other “geo” things

• The Digital Encyclopedia of Africa compiles the civilisations, languages, myths, architecture, and living traditions of indigenous communities across the continent. The website has an interactive map and is full of city profiles which are based on open archives (UNESCO, museums, public libraries), alongside premium and scholarly sources for deeper research.

• Arte is showing the video ‘Contre-cartographie: What Google Maps Doesn’t Show You’. Two French artists feature in it: Larissa Fassler and Mathias Poisson. They explain the concept of counter-cartography. This approach challenges our usual relationship with space. It also questions how we normally represent the world. This brings to light issues that would otherwise go unnoticed. The video has subtitles in English, Spanish, Polish, and Italian.

• Werner Pluta, of Heise, reported that researchers from RWTH Aachen, ETH Zurich, and the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia triggered an artificial earthquake with a magnitude just below zero in the Alps as part of an experiment to improve future earthquake prediction.

• While Joël Lapointe, an amateur astronomer, was planning a camping vacation in 2024 he observed a strange 25 km depression near lake Marsal, north of Magpie in Quebec, that looked like a meteor crater in satellite imagery. Alerted geologists explored the site and confirmed the discovery of this previously unidentified 390-million-year-old Uhackatik meteor crater. The name was chosen in consultation with the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit.

• Jnally, of Spatial Source, reported that Andrii Rohovyi recently improved the routing algorithm of OpenTripPlanner. Rohovyi explained their improvement in a preprint, ‘Early Pruning for Public Transport Routing’, available on arXiv.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
		Online	Racha Mapping Party	2026-07-27 - 2026-08-02
			UN Mappers Community Discussion: Community Chapters Initiative	2026-07-31
	Hannover	Endhaltestelle Roderbruch der Stadtbahnlinie 4	Mapping Party	2026-07-31
	Thiruvananthapuram	Kazhakoottam Market bus stop	Mapping Party at Kazhakoottam	2026-08-01
	Uppsala	Datorföreningen Update	Kartträff i Uppsala. Tema Cykelinfrastruktur	2026-08-02
	Salzburg	Bewohnerservice Elisabeth-Vorstadt	OSM-Treffpunkt	2026-08-04
			Missing Maps London Mapathon (with Training) Beginner Friendly (Online) [eng]	2026-08-04
	San Jose	Online	South Bay Map Night	2026-08-04
			iD Community Chat	2026-08-05
	Stuttgart	Biergarten Tschechen & Söhne	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen	2026-08-05
	Angers	L’Arrière Train, 3 rue de Frémur, Angers	Angers Rencontre mensuelle OpenStreetMap	2026-08-06
		Bar Le Schmilblik	Rencontre mensuelle des contributeurs Paris sud	2026-08-06
	臺北市	國立臺灣科技大學研揚大樓412-1教室	COSCUP 2026 State of the Map Taiwan 2026 / Wikidata Community Summit 2026	2026-08-09
	大阪市	11F, Urban Net Midosuji Building, 4-2-13 Awajicho	OpenStreetMap関西カンファレンス2026 / OSM Kansai Conference 2026	2026-08-09
	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-08-09
	New Delhi	North Delhi	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.31 (North Zone)	2026-08-09
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #91	2026-08-10
	Hamburg	Voraussichtlich: “Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-08-11
		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-08-11
			Missing Maps Online Mapathon von Ärzte ohne Grenzen	2026-08-12
	München	Echardinger Einkehr	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-08-12
			UN Mappers Mappy Hour	2026-08-13
		Hochschule Rhein-Sieg	OSM auf der FrOSCon 2026 in Sankt Augustin	2026-08-15 - 2026-08-16
	Hannover	Hannover Congress Centrum	OSM auf der Maker Faire Hannover 2026	2026-08-15 - 2026-08-16
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India - Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-08-15
		Stadt- und Waagenmuseum Oschatz	Kartenwerkstatt Oschatz	2026-08-16

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, MatthiasMatthias, Minh Nguyen, Raquel Dezidério Souto, SeverinGeo, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

16/07/2026-22/07/2026

Mapping campaigns

• Ranjeet Jadhav, of Mid-Day, reported that Jaipur-based long-distance hiker Manav Singh Shekhawat has mapped more than 2,000 km of trekking trails in the Sahyadri Mountains on OpenStreetMap after walking nearly 3,500 km across the range.

Community

• In the latest OpenCage’s OpenStreetMap interview series, Matt Whilden spoke about his journey as an OSM mapper, his work supporting the community through the OpenStreetMap US Board, and his passion for creative mapping.

• Jikke Meyer plans to map football stadiums on OpenStreetMap, starting from Botswana in Africa.

• Volker Krause joined an in-person workshop at HTW Berlin to discuss topics related to mapping indoor spaces in OpenStreetMap.

Local chapter news

• OSM Malaga tooted that the Ruedas Redondas association, a cycling users’ association in Malaga, has added a bicycle parking map ► to its website based on OpenStreetMap data. As they explained on their website, it is the ‘most complete and up-to-date’ bicycle parking map of the city, thanks to the collaborative work of the local OSM community.

Maps

• Nicolas Seriot has developed Cartopolis, a web app that renders OpenStreetMap data in a map style reminiscent of the late 1990s.

• HeiGIT presented a custom openrouteservice instance for disaster response in Venezuela, combining OpenStreetMap with real-time road-blockage data from HDX to dynamically route humanitarian vehicles around damaged or impassable infrastructure.

• Jaz Michaelking developed Fediverse Near Me, a web map based on OSM that visualises a curated selection of well-moderated social web providers that are open for registration and serve specific countries, regions, or cities.

• Alessandro Lorenzi has created OpenStreetPhoto, an interactive map that displays all the photos linked to a feature in the OpenStreetMap database. It is currently only available for Italy.

• Using the world’s restaurant data from OpenStreetMap, Vladimir Terentyev has developed a world map of dish names on restaurant signs, attempting to answer the research question: ‘Where does plov end and biryani begin, and who really draws these limits’?

OSM in action

• Stefan Keller presented two web mapping applications built on OpenStreetMap and open government data. VivaMap combines OSM POIs and buildings with official datasets to let users build customised quality-of-life indicators for Swiss neighbourhoods, while UrbanistMap lets communities collaboratively geolocate and visualise urban development projects worldwide. UrbanistMap is well suited to encouraging mappers with local knowledge to update the data in OSM.

Software

• ^[1] Oleksandr Nazarenko has built Pidyizdy, a navigation app focused on showing the exact location of building entrances and apartment number ranges. It is designed for couriers, taxi drivers, and utility service workers, so they don’t have to wander around apartment yards searching for the entrance.

• Pavel Gavrilov tried darkonus’ recently released JOSM plugin, FilletTools (we reported earlier). The plugin allows users to round the corners of lines and polygons, as well as convert freehand strokes into smooth ways. Pavel praised FilletTools, noting that new JOSM plugins rarely have such a strong case for becoming a standard tool in many users’ workflows.

• AnyFinder, originally released as a freemium app in 2019 for iPhone and iPad, is now available as a free browser-based application for finding, adding and editing OpenStreetMap places from phones, tablets, or desktop computers. AnyFinder uses Overpass and Postpass as its backend query engines. The app’s catalogue currently contains 286 place categories in 66 groups, from restaurants and shops to public services and natural features.

Categories define what kind of place to search for, while 128 filters refine results by properties such as wheelchair access, cuisine, fuel type, or available facilities. The current dataset covers 47 structured features and 435 OSM tags. Changes to places can be submitted directly to OpenStreetMap through the app using an OpenStreetMap account.

• Tina and Eugene introduced OsmAnd’s measuring tools, including Distance by Tap, Ruler, Radius Ruler, and Target Line.

• Tina and Eugene reported also that OsmAnd has discontinued ‘merged’ maps, which were large country- or region-level files assembled from smaller regional maps. Users who have one of these maps installed will no longer receive updates for it.

• David Larlet reported that uMap has received a grant through the NGI0 Commons Fund to integrate vector tiles into uMap. The current work is focused on vector tile customisation, allowing users to modify the map style, such as removing buildings or changing road colours, so the basemap can better fit the purpose of their map.

• Stadia Maps explained that moving from a geocoding prototype to a production-level application often reveals a frustrating reality: ‘standard’ industry pricing is rarely as simple as it looks. Most caching solutions charge steep premiums (often 6–8x normal query cost) to store results, and some impose strict rules limiting caching to single-user sessions only.

• OSM user SmallCat has published josm-account-manager, a plugin that lets you manage multiple account profiles and different endpoints in JOSM. It is available for installation from JOSM‘s plugin source.

• Koharachan announced , in her OSM User Diary, a fork of iD she is working on, and described its special features that ease mapping. She said that this editor introduces some AI assistance.

• Fedilab developed PawFed, a collaborative map for animal welfare. Mention @PawFed from your Mastodon account with relevant hashtags and a location, and your report will appear on the map. Shelters, veterinary clinics, lost or found animals, food donations, and other information that can help animals are displayed on the map.

• Venetis Charalampidis reported on the progress of the closures.osm.ch Google Summer of Code 2026 project, noting that one of its goals, adding a Valhalla-powered routing endpoint that genuinely avoids closed roads, has now been completed.

Programming

• Marcos Dione has developed a map showing the sizes of city blocks in Marseille by processing the street network data from OpenStreetMap.

• The Austrian-German OSM tile hoster Maptoolkit has launched a free vector tile server that permits commercial use. The cartography features rather opinionated cartography, with a focus on tourism and outdoor, including outdoor-specific styles (Hiking, Cycling, Winter), global hill-shading, contour lines, water depths, 3D terrain, and a maximum data zoom of 15 globally. It is hosted in the EU and privacy-friendly: No API key, login, or cookies. Fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This service supports custom style sheets, including a new, beginner-friendly map editor at mapmaker.maptoolkit.org. It includes AI-ready documentation. You’ll also find an interesting comparison with OpenFreeMap, Protomaps, Versatiles, and OpenMapTiles on the page.

Releases

• uMap version 3.8.0a4 was released on 18 July 2026.

Did you know that …

• … Observing the City has made ‘Where is Downtown’? This is a web app that lets users draw what they consider to be the ‘downtown’ of a given city and compares their definition with everyone else’s.

OSM in the media

• The online magazine Konvert featured articles on volunteer projects such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, iNaturalist, Project Gutenberg, and Stack Overflow, and spoke ► to some of the participants of these projects.

Other “geo” things

• clement_igonet revealed on OSM US’s Slack that he had built a small MapLibre application that shows a time-slider over European administrative boundaries, where the polygons come from an API that models them with valid periods (from sources as INSEE COG, IGN Admin Express and Eurostat GISCO, all open data, no OSM data involved for now). The demo is available. You can watch a short video. The API in the background is api.confinia.io and the source is available on GitHub.

• The NOAA Office for Coastal Management runs four major programmes, one of which is the Digital Coast. In this context, the Sea Level Calculator has been launched, which estimates scenarios for changes in mean sea level, showing the sections of the coastline that would be affected (in monitoring regions). To assist researchers and other users, a series of short videos has been made available.

• HeiGIT has launched a new newsletter, Point of Interest. The first issue focuses on the latest evolution of openrouteservice, its newest developments for humanitarian (and other) uses, and where HeiGIT is heading next.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
			MapCup Asia Pacific 2026	2026-07-01 - 2026-07-31
		Hotel Sadanand, Crawford Market	OSM Mumbai Mapping Party No.12 (Masjid Bunder)	2026-07-26
		Online	Racha Mapping Party	2026-07-27 - 2026-08-02
	Braunschweig	Stratum 0	Braunschweiger Mappertreffen im Stratum 0 Hackerspace	2026-07-28
	Kiel	Mango’s, Kiel	Kieler Mapper*innentreffen	2026-07-28
	Berlin	Online	OSM-Verkehrswende #77	2026-07-28
	Mannheim	RaumZeitLabor, Mannheim	Rhein-Neckar OSM Treffen	2026-07-29
	Düsseldorf	Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2026	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)	2026-07-29
			UN Mappers Community Discussion: Community Chapters Initiative	2026-07-31
	Hannover	Endhaltestelle Roderbruch der Stadtbahnlinie 4	Mapping Party	2026-07-31
	Thiruvananthapuram	Kazhakoottam Market bus stop	Mapping Party at Kazhakoottam	2026-08-01
	Uppsala	Datorföreningen Update	Kartträff i Uppsala. Tema Cykelinfrastruktur	2026-08-02
	Salzburg	Bewohnerservice Elisabeth-Vorstadt	OSM-Treffpunkt	2026-08-04
			Missing Maps London Mapathon (with Training) Beginner Friendly (Online) [eng]	2026-08-04
			iD Community Chat	2026-08-05
	Stuttgart	Biergarten Tschechen & Söhne	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen	2026-08-05
	Angers	L’Arrière Train, 3 rue de Frémur, Angers	Angers Rencontre mensuelle OpenStreetMap	2026-08-06
		Bar Le Schmilblik	Rencontre mensuelle des contributeurs Paris sud	2026-08-06
	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-08-09
	New Delhi	North Delhi	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.31 (North Zone)	2026-08-09
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #91	2026-08-10

This weeklyOSM was produced by MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, 快乐的老鼠宝宝.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.