Monthly Archives: June 2026

State of the Map 2026: Call for Posters

SotM2018_viewing_posters

Did you miss the call for general and OSM Science presentations? Fret not! You can still present your project and initiatives at State of the Map 2026! The Call for Posters for SotM 2026 is now open!

Your poster could show how well your community is mapped. It could be a new beautiful style or a map. It could be a community project or statistics, or a poster explaining and inviting people to  OpenStreetMap. The important thing is that it is about OSM. We also welcome academic  posters on research around OpenStreetMap data.

For inspiration, you can check out the SotM 2025 posters – https://2025.stateofthemap.org/posters/

Submission Requirements

  • The poster must be in A0 format (841×1189 mm).
  • The poster must be related to OpenStreetMap.
  • The poster must be open, innovative and transparent (no copying).
  • The poster must be an original work (individual, collective or institutional).
  • The poster must be submitted under an open license (CC-BY-SA 4.0 or CC0).
  • Maximum of two entries per person, team or institution.
  • You’re welcome to use generative AI/LLMs like ChatGPT to improve your abstract or text, but you must mention this in the “Notes” field of your submission. Please refrain from generating the whole Poster, images or large parts of it using AI/LLMs. It’s fine to use it to improve the wording, the grammar and to avoid spelling errors, or to create a translation of texts you have written yourself in your native language. We do prefer imperfect submissions with a human touch that make us look forward to an exciting and interesting poster. We do not want “perfect”  and unnecessarily bloated submissions that all sound the same since they were generated by some tool.

How to participate

  • Maximum file size: 30-40 MB
  • Format: PDF
  • Please provide a description of your poster in the upload form. For example, the background of the project or whatever you consider important to mention in the context of the poster – all that you would tell people if you show them your poster. We will publish this text together with the poster on the SotM website.

Timeline

  • Deadline: 31 July 2026 23:59:59 UTC +0

The SotM team hopes to shortlist up to 15 posters that will be published on our website and some other SotM channels under CC-BY-SA 4.0

The State of the Map Working Group

Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in your language…? Please email communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [your language]

The State of the Map conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap, organised by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The 

OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap   project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a   year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is an international project to create a free map of  the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings and a lot more worldwide. Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, to calculate routes etc. OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps which can be very quickly, or easily, updated.

2026 Board Face-to-Face (F2F) in Madrid, Spain

The OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) Board of Directors is excited to share this blog post with all of our community members. From June 6th-7th, members of the Board of Directors Craig Allan (Chair), Dani Waltersdorfer Jimenez (Secretary), Roland Olbricht (Treasurer), Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Maurizio Napolitano, and facilitator Allen Gunn (also known as Gunner), met for two full working days in Madrid to discuss and tackle priorities and action items that need to be accomplished in the next 12 months. Amongst the discussed topics are a fundraising campaign, the “reviving” of the Communications Working Group (CWG), a new job posting which will be shared in the next coming months, the OSMF move to the European Union (EU), the launch of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy, and other topics. It is truly a pleasure to work with a team that is aligned on shared values including trust and respect, who are pushing for the success of a shared passion: the OpenStreetMap project. It must be noted however, that all of this could not have been possible without the leadership, patience, and tremendous organizational skills of Gunner who has been the OSMF facilitator for over 10 years. Thank you, Gunner!

What made this meeting particularly special is that we had the honor and pleasure of working from the TomTom offices in Madrid. We want to truly highlight our gratitude for TomTom for sharing their space with us, and most of all, we want to give a big shout-out to Priscilla Zachée for spending her weekend with us.

Face-to-face meetings are unlike others. For those who don’t know, us Board Members live in different countries all over the globe, so having the opportunity to work together, “ideate”, brainstorm, discuss tough topics, and enjoy our time together is quite treasured and important for us. And on the front of the importance of human connection, we promise to keep pushing forward the key that makes OpenStreetMap truly unique, unlike any other geospatial database out there: Our essence is our community.

We’d like to extend a thank you to all members of the community for your continued trust and passion for the OSM Project. We are always here for you should you have any questions or comments.

– The Board