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.

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.

• Access: Download

• Data theme: Contextual

• Data structure: Raster

• Coverage: Great Britain

• Scale: 1:5 000 000

• Format: GeoTIFF LZW compressed 254 dpi

• Ordering area: All of Great Britain

• Publication month: January

• OS Data Hub plan: OS OpenData Plan (FREE), Premium Plan, Public Sector Plan, Energy & Infrastructure Plan

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.