GB Overview Maps Documentation

Here you will find all documentation for the GB Overview Maps product.

Ordnance Survey's GB Overview Maps product provides two overview maps of Great Britain at 1:5 000 000 scale.

This product is updated annually in January.

A GB Overview Plus map showing detailed areas of England, Wales, and Scotland

Benefits

Our simplest maps of the British Isles

The GB Overview Maps product is free to view, download and use for commercial, educational, and personal purposes.

🆕 Improved cartography

The GB Overview Maps product was refreshed in January 2025 with a new look and closer affiliation with other contextual mapping products.

🆕 National Parks, towns and cities shown

This product now includes shaded National Park areas in addition to cities and towns throughout England, Wales and Scotland.

Use Cases

Provide context to your message

The maps are great for hand-outs, desktop publishing and classroom use.

Initial maps for GIS

These are ideal as initial maps for your GIS. They highlight Great Britain while showing neighbouring European countries.

Summary

• Access: Download via the OS Data Hub

• Data theme: Contextual

• Data structure: Raster

• Coverage: Great Britain

• Scale: 1:5 000 000

• Format: GeoTIFF

• Ordering area: All of Great Britain

• Publication month: January

Additional Information

Colour options

Palette of 256 colours.

Customisation options

While you can’t change the look of the map itself, you can open it in image editing or desktop publishing software and make annotations.

How to get this product

Access to this OS OpenData product is free through the OS Data Hub.