TomTom | OpenStreetMap Map Cup Asia Pacific 2026 competition

Communities Oceania
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Hi Oceania,

On behalf of TomTom and in collaboration with the OpenStreetMap Board, I am pleased to announce an upcoming official OSM mapping competition that will run in July. The 2026 Map Cup Asia Pacific is a regional mapping campaign designed to build community participation, create healthy competition across the Asia Pacific, and generate measurable map improvements during a defined campaign window in July 2026.

Whether you are an experienced mapper, validator, community leader, student, or first-time contributor, Map Cup Asia Pacific 2026 offers an opportunity to collaborate, learn, and make a meaningful impact through OpenStreetMap.

Together, we can build better maps, stronger communities, and a more connected Asia Pacific region.

Join us in July (1st to 31st) 2026 and be part of the movement! Prizes will be awarded to the top three individual contributors.

The competition is open to most APAC countries - for any concerns or queries, I am the main contact for the following regions: Australia, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu. Please feel free to contact me directly or comment below.

Once we finalise the competition rules, terms and conditions, I will update this post with further details and a registration link.

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Kind regards

Peter (Legras_TT | OpenStreetMap) (TomTom)

TomTom Mapping team: osm@tomtom.com

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Hi all, registration is now open until July 3rd! Prizes of up to $USD500 will be awarded to the winner with the most contributions! Please see the critical information below:

  1. Registration form: Microsoft Forms

  2. Full rules, terms and conditions: Full Competition Rules - Google Docs

  3. Scoring guidelines: Scoring Guideline - Google Docs

Please read the rules carefully, and make sure to use the hashtag #MapCupAPAC2026 in your changesets when participating so we can adjudicate contributions correctly.

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Just as an aside, the OSMF Data Working Group has had to remove hundreds of thousands of AI-imported buildings in Africa tagged with “#tt_event” and “#AfricaMapCup2026” earlier this year. These buildings were low-quality automatic tracings uploaded into OSM without any discussion or conflation (leading to duplicate buildings, overlapping buildings, buildings in the middle of roads and so on). This revert caused a lot of work for the DWG team and even affected downstream replication clients (pnorman's Diary | Anatomy of a revert on the servers | OpenStreetMap). I would sincerely ask TomTom to

  • carefully design competitions to avoid such damaging effects,
  • monitor any activity in relation to “gamified” events like this,
  • and automatically disqualify mappers who contribute an inhuman amount of data.

Creating an incentive for people to violate OSM’s import guidelines is just as bad as violating the guidelines oneself.

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Thanks for raising this Frederik, excellent point.

We have explicitly forbade any kind of automated edits in the rules for this upcoming competition with a particular focus on discouraging addition of buildings from sources such as MS Building Footprints/RapiD and otherwise. Of course, the risk of rulebreaking remains and I’ll share your feedback internally with the organisers and let you know their response. I agree that the moderation will have to be strict and swift.

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Thank you for highlighting your concern.

We appreciate your guidance and share the same goal of ensuring that MapCup Asia Pacific 2026 contributes high-quality edits to OpenStreetMap while maintaining the integrity of the map.

To provide additional transparency, below is an overview of the support structure for the event.

1. Dedicated TomTom Validation Team

The following full-time TomTom editors have been assigned to support validation activities throughout the competition (working interchangeably based on workload):

  • Jebel_Hafeet, melody_Tej, Byenin, Palary

2. Event Operations & Community Support

In addition to the dedicated validation team, the event is supported by a broader group of TomTom employees and OSM community contributors and representatives who are responsible for various activities which includes - Project/Challenge creation, onboarding participants, training sessions and support from experts and documentation, coordination with newbies to support, day-to-day event operations. Quality monitoring and follow-up, daily support on chat is provided by country representatives.

This team includes myself (Kiran Ahire), Can Unen, Contributor Crew from TomTom (volunteer mappers), Operations support, and other TomTom colleagues.
We want to emphasize that the event is coordinated by a team and not by a single individual.

3. Quality Assurance & Monitoring - Quality remains our highest priority throughout the competition and is our core pillar of MapCup Asia Pacific.

As part of the competition rules and also as mentioned by Peter in the above reply-

  • Automated imports and bulk imports are strictly prohibited.

  • Participants have been instructed to follow OpenStreetMap mapping guidelines and community best practices.

  • We are also working internally to strengthen our monitoring so that unusually large spikes in editing activity can be identified and reviewed as early as possible, allowing us to investigate and address potential issues proactively.

4. Collaboration with the DWG

We sincerely appreciate the DWG’s continued support and oversight. If there are additional recommendations or best practices that you would like us to adopt during the competition, we would be happy to incorporate them.

Our shared objective is to ensure that MapCup Asia Pacific 2026 remains a positive experience for both participants and the wider OpenStreetMap community while delivering high-quality contributions.

Thank you once again for your support.

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Hello Legras,

I am Riya Biju, connecting from Australia. I signed up to the OSM community just today and seems like I have missed out on the registration deadline, is there any chance I could still join?

Thank you

Warm Regards,

Riya Biju Ollukaran

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Hi there,

Thanks for your interest, I’ve let my team know your request - just waiting on their decision.

CC @ahirek

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We have extended the registrations until 11th July.

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Okay, thanks a lot! @ahirek &@Legras_TT

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Hi all, we are preparing an online kickoff event tomorrow (Wednesday) evening at 6PM AEST. Note that we have allocated a 2 hour time slot to this event but we anticipate it will probably be shorter. We’ll share the link to join the Teams meeting shortly before ::trophy:: Aside from that, here is some further info:

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Hi all, our kickoff event is tonight 6PM AEST on Teams!

Here is the join link:

Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/359708178056361?p=us9vzxAYRhrNe6q1bO

Meeting ID: 359 708 178 056 361

Passcode: Ka7yv6Hs