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The Geofabrik dowload server is a wildly popular service that each month pushes out about 400 TB of OpenStreetMap data to users around the world – most of that in the form of country or regional .osm.pbf files. We publish these files with a date in the filename (e.g. germany-250723.osm.pbf) but for convenience we also have a downloadable file like “germany-latest.osm.pbf” that always gives you the most recent version.

Keeping these two as separate files does, however, interfere with caching; the proxies we use to speed up the download offering don’t know that “something-250723” and “something-latest” are the same file so they need to retrieve them both.

Starting 01 September, we’ll change this in line with best practices, and send a HTTP redirect if you request a “latest” file. The redirect then points the client to the appropriate URL with a data embedded in the file name. This should be transparent for most use cases, however if you have some sort of setup that does not follow HTTP redirects you might have to modify that. wget will follow redirects by default, whereas curl requires the command line flag -L.

Geofabrik is pleased to support the OpenStreetMap community as a bronze sponsor of two upcoming conferences in 2025:

• State of the Map Global – Manila, Philippines
• State of the Map Europe – Dundee, Scotland, UK

We have been regular sponsors of SotM events for many years, including regional conferences such as FOSSGIS. Our staff have also contributed by speaking at various sessions over time.

Events like SotM offer a useful opportunity for exchange within the OpenStreetMap ecosystem. While much of the work in the OSM world happens remotely, occasional in-person meetings remain valuable for maintaining collaboration and perspective.

Sponsorship opportunities are still available for both events for those interested in supporting the community.

In der letzten Woche waren drei von uns – Amanda, Michael und Frederik – auf der FOSSGIS-Konferenz in Münster. (Die Geofabrik ist auch Sponsor der FOSSGIS-Konferenz.) Die Veranstaltung, die jedes Jahr interessante Vorträge und Gespräche rund um alles im Open-Source-GIS-Bereich bietet, hatte dieses Mal rund 750 Besucher:innen und fand in den denkmalgeschützten Räumen im Schloss statt.

Alle Vorträge wurden vom CCC-Videoteam aufgezeichnet und können auf https://media.ccc.de/c/fossgis2025 angesehen werden. Amanda hat über ihr Projekt WaterwayMap gesprochen; Michaels Thema war, wie man in Deutschland noch neue Mapping-Aufgaben findet, und Frederik hat einen neuen OSM-Datenabfragedienst namens Postpass vorgestellt.

Der FOSSGIS e.V. hat auf seiner Mitgliederversammlung beschlossen, dass er Unternehmen und andere Organisationen, die OpenStreetMap nutzen, als „Förderer“ gewinnen will, um mehr Planungssicherheit für seine OpenStreetMap-Aktivitäten zu erreichen. Die Geofabrik hat natürlich gleich ja gesagt – wir sind die ersten! Unterstützen auch Sie die wertvolle OSM-Arbeit des FOSSIGS e.V., indem Sie Förderer werden.

We’re happy to announce that we now have a nice public transport map, courtesy of Melchior Moos who runs the original öpnvkarte.de web site. Geofabrik now hosts its own version of that original “ÖPNVKarte” (“ÖPNV” is the German acronym for public transport), and we’ll be offering it to international customers under the somewhat simpler name “Public Transport Map”.

We’ll also approach the OpenStreetMap operations team and recommend this map for inclusion on www.openstreetmap.org which has featured ÖPNVKarte for a long time and only recently dropped it due to operational concerns.

This public transport map currently relies on a proprietary database importer written by Melchior Moos, but using the work contributed by our recent Geofabrik intern Max Hoogerdijk, we’re planning to publish import scripts compatible with osm2pgsql’s Themepark import mechanism under an open source license soon.