TomTom | OpenStreetMap Map Cup Asia Pacific 2026 competition

Legras_TT · June 26, 2026, 6:05am

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.

Kind regards

Peter (Legras_TT | OpenStreetMap) (TomTom)

TomTom Mapping team: osm@tomtom.com

Legras_TT · July 1, 2026, 3:39am

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:

Registration form: Microsoft Forms
Full rules, terms and conditions: Full Competition Rules - Google Docs
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.

woodpeck · July 1, 2026, 11:43am

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.

Legras_TT · July 1, 2026, 11:38pm

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.

ahirek · July 2, 2026, 4:10pm

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.

Riya_Biju_Ollukaran · July 5, 2026, 4:45pm

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

Legras_TT · July 6, 2026, 6:26am

Hi there,

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

CC @ahirek

ahirek · July 6, 2026, 8:31am

We have extended the registrations until 11th July.

Riya_Biju_Ollukaran · July 6, 2026, 1:20pm

Okay, thanks a lot! @ahirek &@Legras_TT

Legras_TT · July 7, 2026, 6:07am

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 :: Aside from that, here is some further info:

Legras_TT · July 8, 2026, 3:22am

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

Legras_TT · July 17, 2026, 2:13am

Hi Oceania, we are at the halfway mark in the Map Cup comp! The team has run the numbers for the first two weeks and it’s great to see Aus is placed second by edit volume - really cool! Thanks for everyone’s participation and lets keep the momentum going for the final stretch Once again please let me know if there are any questions or concerns

FajrAl · July 19, 2026, 11:28am

Hi everyone,

I recently tried to validate some HotOSM tasks in Australia (OSM US Tasking Manager) and Malaysia (OSM US Tasking Manager). During the review, I marked tasks as complete if they were fully and well-mapped, or provided feedback and marked them as “More mapping needed” where appropriate. While these challenges welcome everyone, including newbies, I noticed two specific users whose mapping style was quite questionable.

One user mapped buildings as blocks of rectangles, regardless of the actual house shape, which I was able to fix. However, the other user created multiple fragmented buildings for what should be a single structure. I left feedback on the latter user’s changesets and even sent a private message, but the user has continued mapping in the same manner without any response. I am concerned this will keep happening until the challenge finishes.

How should I handle these tasks? Should I just mark them as complete and move on, or should I keep marking them as “More mapping needed” and leaving the same feedback?

edit: addition

Arga_M · July 21, 2026, 2:56am

Keep what you’re doing. In my opinion, these tasks should be marked as “More mapping needed.” The mapping quality isn’t acceptable given how clear the imagery is–particularly in the Australia region.

The organiser should step in before it gets too late. The lack of response so far is concerning and is allowing the issue to continue.

Legras_TT · July 21, 2026, 3:11am

Hi @FajrAl

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I agree that the quality shown is insufficient - thanks for reaching out to the mapper and validating/rejecting those changes. I agree with marking them as “more mapping needed”. I will also reach out to them and I’ll alert the Malaysia country owner to review those relevant changesets.

Kind regards

Peter

catgirlseraid · July 21, 2026, 7:25am

Changes from the second user have been reverted and they have been blocked in Rubi Shrestha blocked by catgirlseraid | OpenStreetMap , in the future please report cases like this to the DWG

Legras_TT · July 31, 2026, 6:12am

We are on the last day of the Map Cup event looking around to some key areas I’m pleased to see some great achievements in what everyone has accomplished! Thanks for participating and everyone’s hard work. We will be posting final results and leaderboards next week.

Adrian_Shobrooke · July 31, 2026, 6:54am

I agree.

Unfortunately this is a potential result of any gamed approach to mapping.

The blocked mapper is in the top 10 mappers shown in an image further up.

Have all blocked mappers been disqualified from the competion? There should be a competion consequence for poor mapping and especially blocked mappers blocked as a result of thepoor mapping.

Also will final competition results be calculated once all the mapping is qualitatively validated or merely when the competition period ends? If the latter, poor mapping is acceptable by the organisers.

amapanda_ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ · July 31, 2026, 8:00am

Why do you tell people to include the hashtag #WOMAN on all changesets?

This is a strange one. Won’t this negatively affect any attempts to track how many women* contribute to OSM?

kucai · July 31, 2026, 11:36pm

yeah.. and guess who have to clean up all these mess. not me! ( i am tired of this)