New members and visitors are always welcome to attend these
events.
Please submit your meeting notices to John W. Docktor
<phillymaps(at)gmail(dot)com>
Exhibition announcements can
be found at Cartography
- Calendar of Exhibitions.
Click here
for archive of past events.
February 6, 2026 - Edinburgh - Ever wondered what secrets lie in a map? Or wanted to go behind the scenes of a major collection? Do you just love maps? Join with the National Library of Scotland, Causewayside Building, for the Map Festival, a day dedicated to all things cartographic. Discover the amazing maps and aerial photographs held by: Edinburgh City Archives, Historic Environment Scotland, National Collection of Aerial Photography, National Library of Scotland, National Records of Scotland, and University of Edinburgh. This is a hands-on event for everyone. This is a free drop-in event between 10:30AM to 4:00PM.
February 9, 2026 - London (Online) The Map Curators’ Group of the British Cartographic Society will hold its annual business meeting at 2pm on Teams. If you would like attend, or have any items for the agenda, please contact <martin.davis(at)cartography.org.uk> or <debbie.hall(at)cartography.org.uk> by Friday 6th February. We will send a meeting link and any papers in advance.
February 10, 2025 - Perth (Hybrid) A Mapping Identities: Visual Depictions of Scotland conference will be held 9am-6pm at UHI Perth. The research project is a collaboration between The University of the Highlands and Islands Institute for Northern Studies and our partners from the National Library of Scotland and Landscape Research Group. Though the purpose of a map may superficially be merely functional, educational or descriptive, the very act of its production will have necessitated some level of selectivity. Such selectivity can include the features presented, the scale used, where the map is centered, the annotations used and where boundaries and borders are placed. This project asks why and how such choices are made and how these choices have impacted the way that geography, cosmology, history, geology and identity has been perceived in Scotland. Registration required.
February 10, 2026 - Washington (Online) Curious about our nautical chart collections? Please join Geography and Map Division staff, Library of Congress, for a virtual orientation to our nautical charts and resources, 3:00-4:00 pm (Eastern)! The first half of this orientation session will give an introduction to nautical charts, their history, and their uses. The second part of the orientation will highlight the various nautical chart holdings found within the division and how to search for and view these maps. After the presentation, staff look forward to answering additional questions from attendees. Register for this session here!
February 12, 2026 - Oxford (Online) The 33nd Annual Series Oxford Seminars In Cartography run from 4.30pm to 6.00pm (UK time) via Zoom Webinar. Camille Serchuk (Southern Connecticut State University) in conversation with Elizabeth Baigent (School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford) will talk about Map Readings – ‘Lies of the Land: Painted maps in Late Medieval and Early Modern France'. Click here to book your place. For further details please contact: Nick Millea <nick.millea(at)bodleian.ox.ac.uk>, Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG; Tel: 01865 287119. The Oxford Seminars in Cartography are supported by: The Friends of TOSCA / The Bodleian Libraries / The School of Geography and the Environment / The Charles Close Society / Lovell Johns Ltd.
February 12, 2026 - Philadelphia (Hybrid) Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University & the 2025-2026 Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies and the Center for Italian Studies Fellow in Italian Manuscript Studies) will talk about The Fabrication of Borders: Tailoring and Cartography in Early Modern Europe. In early modern Europe, fashion and cartography shared far more common ground than is usually acknowledged. Popular costume books, much like geographical atlases, helped shape emerging ideas of nationhood, while maps disseminated notions of local dress across the world. Yet despite these shared aims, the connection between the two fields has gone largely unnoticed. This talk argues that this overlooked convergence is precisely where fashion, as we understand it, first took shape. Lecture will be held 5:15 - 6:30 pm EST at Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, 6th Floor, 3420 Walnut Street. Register for in-person or online attendance.
February 17, 2026 - New York (Online) New York Map Society Secretary Andrew Kapochunas has, for over a decade, helped people find an image of their ancestral village on an antique map. After recent presentations to JewishGen’s LitvakSIG group and the St. Louis Genealogical Society he’s decided to show How to find any village in Central and Eastern Europe on an antique topographical map to a map audience. In this Zoom lecture, at 7:00pm (ET), he will explain the step-by-step process he himself follows as he searches for images of three towns with which he has deep personal connections. RSVP to <kapochunas@gmail.com> to receive a Zoom link nearer the day.
February 19, 2026 – Chicago Hybrid) You are invited to join the Chicago Map Society for a special program at the Newberry Library; 5:30 p.m. – social hour (delicious finger food and light refreshments), 6:00 p.m. – presentation by Kris Butler Drink Maps. Take a journey through drunken Victorian Britain told through maps made to convince law makers to stop granting liquor licenses. A “drink map” may sound like a pub guide, yet it refers to late 19th century maps designed to shock people by showing at a glance the numerous places where alcohol could be purchased. Did these lovely temperance tools inspire anger – or did they just make people thirsty? Admire lovely examples while hearing the story. Click here for Zoom registration.
February 19–21, 2026 - San Francisco The Renaissance Society of America will hold its 72nd Annual Meeting at the San Francisco Hilton Union Square. Ricardo Padrón, Asa Mittman, and Dan Terkla will be having a panel Premodern Mapping Today. They are planning to have papers which address any aspect of mapping in the premodern world (pre-1700), from any mapping tradition. Additional information from Ricardo Padrón <padron(at)virginia.edu>.
February 19, 2026 – Washington (Online) Hosted by the Washington Map Society, this Zoom meeting is presented in partnership with the California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, and Texas Map Societies. Anyone interested in participating in the meeting must RSVP to John Docktor at washmap(at)gmail.com in order to receive the meeting ID and passcode. Meeting will start at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM Central Time, 5:00 PM Mountain Time, and 4:00 PM Pacific Time. This meeting is arranged in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Map Society. Whether a trail map of a serene forest or a plot of historical markers in a bustling city, maps help us understand and connect to the spaces we inhabit, creating a feeling of topophilia, or “love of place”. In this talk Astrotopophilia: A Love of Place with Maps of Space, Sam Cartwright (PhD candidate, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder) will trace the history of planetary cartography from the earliest telescope sketches to today’s high-resolution imagery and explore the indelible link between maps and humanity’s fascination with space.
February 24, 2026 - Cambridge (Online) The Cambridge Seminars in the History of Cartography will meet at 5.30pm UK time. Adrian Webb will discuss Churchill’s secret chart-makers All are welcome. Click here for Zoom link. Please send an email to <events(at)emma.cam.ac.uk> if you wish to join the mailing list. For any enquiries, please contact Sarah Bendall at <sarah.bendall(at)emma.cam.ac.uk>, tel. 01223 330476.
February 24, 2026 - Denver (Hybrid) The Rocky Mountain Map Society will meet at 5:30 PM MT in History Colorado, 1200 N Broadway. Michael Buehler (owner of Boston Rare Maps) will discuss Where the *%&^# is Polypotamia? Mapping proto-states in the early Republic. This program addresses the question, “What do contemporary maps reveal about state creation in Trans-Appalachia in the years immediately after the Revolution?” This program is illustrated using images of rare, important, and deeply interesting American maps of the era. Please register and get a free ticket for entry to History Colorado for this event, or click here when meeting starts for the Zoom conference (no registration required for Zoom).
February 26, 2026 – London (Hybrid) We're very pleased to invite you to this year's Maps and Society lectures in the history of cartography, hosted by the Warburg Institute. Meetings will start at the usual time of 5pm (GMT) on selected Thursdays. All meetings are free and take place online and in person. For those attending in person, meetings will be held in the Teaching Suite at the Warburg Institute and will be followed by refreshments. For those wishing to attend online, please register online in advance to receive a Zoom link on the day. Bob Headland (Scott Polar Research Institute): Cartographical Conundrums and Antarctic Sovereignty. Hakluyt Society Speaker. Any enquiries, please email <c.delano-smith(at)sas.ac.uk> or <philip.jagessar(at)kcl.ac.uk>.
February 26, 2026 - Nacogdoches, Texas (Online) Dominating the mouth of the Mediterranean, every medieval Islamic Istakhrian map of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Spain from the 11th century onwards has a thus-far unidentified mythical mountain-island named Jabal al-Qilâl located between the straits that separate Spain and North Africa. Karen Pinto will speak at a meeting of the Society for History of Discoveries from 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM (CST). She will discuss Jabal al-Qilâl: Unraveling the Mystery of the Mythical Mountain Island Guarding the Mouth of the Mediterranean in Premodern Islamic Maps. This lecture takes place over Zoom. Registrants will be sent the link before the lecture. You can register for the event here.
February 26, 2026 - Oxford (Hybrid) The Bodleian Libraries are delighted to announce the second Sunderland Collection Symposium: MAPS Digital / Analogue. This day-long event (9.15–16.00) will take place in the Sir Victor Blank Lecture Theatre at the Weston Library, and live streamed on Zoom. Click here for required registration to attend either in person or online.
February 26, 2026 - Washington Join us at the Library of
Congress (Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street SE) from 5pm to
8pm for Celebrate
Topographic Mapping, a special Live! at the Library event
reaching new heights in terrain mapping! This event will feature a
collections display, interactive games and crafts, and a talk by Tom
Patterson, retired cartographer with the US National Park Service, on
the history of topographic mapping techniques.
5pm
to 8pm in the Great Hall: Learn the basics of orienteering, express
your artistry with watercolor landscape painting, and help build a
collaborative terrain model of the hills around Tombstone, Arizona!
(tickets
here)
6:30pm to 7:30pm in LJ-119: Tom
Patterson, “From Airbrush to AI: A Talk on Cartographic Relief”
(tickets
here)
5pm to 6:30pm; 7:30pm to 8pm in
LJ-113: Display of topographic collection items from across the
Library (this display will be closed from 6:30pm to 7:30pm during Tom
Patterson’s talk).
March 7, 2026 - Perth Maps don’t just show us where places are – they show us how people saw the world. Chris Fleet (Map Curator at the National Library of Scotland) will explore a History of Perth in Ten Maps, each offering a glimpse into the city and its people over 400 years. From state integration and military conquest to civic improvement and developing communications, he’ll look at why these maps were made, how they reveal changing priorities over time, and how easy it is to explore them on the National Library’s Maps website. This event is free at 14:30 in the Bell Library, Perth, but prebooking is required.
March 12, 2026 - Oxford (Online) The 33nd Annual Series Oxford Seminars In Cartography run from 4.30pm to 6.00pm (UK time) via Zoom Webinar. Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris) will talk about The unique large-format print of the General Map of the Qing Empire by Li Mingche李明徹 (1751–1832) in Göttingen: tracing its cartographical origins and journey to a German university. Click here to book your place. For further details please contact: Nick Millea <nick.millea(at)bodleian.ox.ac.uk>, Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG; Tel: 01865 287119. The Oxford Seminars in Cartography are supported by: The Friends of TOSCA / The Bodleian Libraries / The School of Geography and the Environment / The Charles Close Society / Lovell Johns Ltd.
March 17, 2026 - London Steve Hanon will be running the next International Map Collector’s Society Show & Tell. If you are interested in participating, please email him at <steve.hanon(at)gmail.com>. Additional details to be released.
March 19, 2026 - Chicago You are invited to join the Chicago Map Society for a special program at the Newberry Library; 5:30 p.m. – social hour (delicious finger food and light refreshments), 6:00 p.m. – Mark Cruse will discuss Marco Polo, Amerasia, and French Exploration in the Sixteenth Century. This illustrated lecture discusses the ways in which Marco Polo’s book, The Description of the World, shaped expectations about the inhabitants, resources, and size of the Americas in sixteenth-century France. Polo composed his book in French in 1298, and the French nobility were among its earliest and most devoted readers. Polo’s Description was an essential reference for French cartography, cosmography, and exploration for centuries, and offers crucial insight into France’s early colonial activity.
March 19, 2026 – Washington (Online) Hosted by the Washington Map Society, this Zoom meeting is presented in partnership with the California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, and Texas Map Societies. Anyone interested in participating in the meeting must RSVP to John Docktor at washmap(at)gmail.com in order to receive the meeting ID and passcode. Meeting will start at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM Central Time, 5:00 PM Mountain Time, and 4:00 PM Pacific Time. Louis Miller (Assistant Director for Research and Fellowship Programs and Cartographic Reference and Teaching Librarian, Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine) will speak about Resurrecting ‘Rhat Soupe’: Alcohol and Allegorical Maps in Mid-19th Century America.
March 24, 2026 - Denver (Hybrid) The Rocky Mountain Map Society will meet at 5:30 PM MT in History Colorado, 1200 N Broadway. Learn about one of the earliest European expeditions through present-day Colorado with History Colorado curator Jeremy Morton as we tour the exhibition Expedition 1776: The Journey of Domínguez & Escalante. The tour will be preceded by a brief talk by Wesley Brown about maps in the exhibit.
March 26, 2026 – London (Hybrid) We're very pleased to invite you to this year's Maps and Society lectures in the history of cartography, hosted by the Warburg Institute. Meetings will start at the usual time of 5pm (GMT) on selected Thursdays. All meetings are free and take place online and in person. For those attending in person, meetings will be held in the Teaching Suite at the Warburg Institute and will be followed by refreshments. For those wishing to attend online, please register online in advance to receive a Zoom link on the day. Mimi Cheng (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz): Aesthetics and Authority in 19th Century Maps of China. Any enquiries, please email <c.delano-smith(at)sas.ac.uk> or <philip.jagessar(at)kcl.ac.uk>.
March 28, 2026 – Brussels The 2026 Annual General Meeting (from 10.00-12.00) and Map Afternoon (from 14.00-17.00) of the Brussels Map Circle will take place in the Map Room at KBR-Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Mont des Arts 28. Additional details to be announced.
April 8-10, 2026 - La Plata, Buenos Aires The XI Simposio Iberoamericano de Historia de la Cartografía will take place in Sergio Karakachoff Graduate Center – National University of La Plata, located at 7th Street, No. 776. Theme is "Mapear y proyectar. Territorios dibujados, diseñados y representados." Registration is free, and the official languages will be Spanish and Portuguese. Contact email: <xisiahc(at)gmail.com>.
April 10, 2026 - Paris The History Commission of the French Cartography Committee and the National Library of France are joining forces to organise a one-day symposium to coincide with the exhibition “Cartes imaginaires, imaginaire des cartes <Maps of the Imagination, Imagination of Maps>”. The symposium will be held at the François-Mitterrand site of the BnF in Paris. Additional information from Catherine Hofmann <catherine.hofmann(at)bnf.fr>.
April 16, 2026 - Chicago You are invited to join the Chicago Map Society for a special program at the Newberry Library; 5:30 p.m. – social hour (delicious finger food and light refreshments), 6:00 p.m. – Nicholas Lowe will be speaking. Lowe is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, educator and curator whose work is known for its contextual and documentary approaches. He holds tenure at the School Of The Art Institute of Chicago as the John H Bryan Chair of Historic Preservation. He is a board member of the International Panorama Council.
April 23, 2026 – Washington The Washington Map Society will meet at 3:30 pm in the George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum, 701 21st Street, NW for a curator led Tour of the Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection. Kasey M. Sease (Curator, Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection) will introduce society members to the Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection and D.C. history exhibitions on view. Guests will have the opportunity to explore maps off-display in the Albert H. Small Center for National Capital Area Studies. At 6:00 pm the group reconvenes for social gathering at Tonic Restaurant (formerly Quigley’s Pharmacy) across the street at 2036 G Street, NW. Tatter Tots and first Tincture of Tonic will be provided. Social Hour organized by Andrew Reynolds (Membership Chair) and Ronald Grim (Program Chair). Registration limited to 30 people. Link for registration will be available later in January.
May 5, 2026 - Cambridge (Online) The Cambridge Seminars in the History of Cartography will meet at 5.30pm UK time. Juliette Dumasy, Université d’Orléans, will discuss The rise of local cartography in Europe, 12th-14th century. All are welcome. All seminars will be on Zoom and joining instructions will be circulated nearer the time. Please send an email to <events(at)emma.cam.ac.uk> if you wish to join the mailing list. For any enquiries, please contact Sarah Bendall at <sarah.bendall(at)emma.cam.ac.uk>, tel. 01223 330476.
May 7, 2026 – London (Hybrid) We're very pleased to invite you to this year's Maps and Society lectures in the history of cartography, hosted by the Warburg Institute. Meetings will start at the usual time of 5pm (GMT) on selected Thursdays. All meetings are free and take place online and in person. For those attending in person, meetings will be held in the Teaching Suite at the Warburg Institute and will be followed by refreshments. For those wishing to attend online, please register online in advance to receive a Zoom link on the day. Anthony Terry (Independent Researcher): The Derrotero Ingles: Unravelling the Mysteries of an early 18th Century English Waggoner in Peru. Any enquiries, please email <c.delano-smith(at)sas.ac.uk> or <philip.jagessar(at)kcl.ac.uk>.
May 21, 2026 - Chicago You are invited to join the Chicago Map Society for a special program at the Newberry Library; 5:30 p.m. – social hour (delicious finger food and light refreshments), 6:00 p.m. – John Scheckter will discuss Our 3 Majors Killed Here: Public and Private Maps of World War I. After the Australian Imperial Force evacuated Gallipoli in 1915, Major R. F. Fitz-Gerald acquired a souvenir map of the battle zone, and marked it with symbols and captions to show his own experience there. We will look closely at this map, its origins and purposes, and at Fitz-Gerald’s continued practice of overwriting and annotating documents, as he transformed mass-produced, often banal, public records of war into meaningful, even therapeutic, personal memoranda of survival.
June 4, 2026 - Oxford (Online) The 33nd Annual Series Oxford Seminars In Cartography run from 4.30pm to 6.00pm (UK time) via Zoom Webinar. Jean-Marc Besse (L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris) will discuss Geography and Catholic censorship in Europe at the end of the sixteenth century. Click here to book your place. For further details please contact: Nick Millea <nick.millea(at)bodleian.ox.ac.uk>, Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG; Tel: 01865 287119. The Oxford Seminars in Cartography are supported by: The Friends of TOSCA / The Bodleian Libraries / The School of Geography and the Environment / The Charles Close Society / Lovell Johns Ltd.
June 6, 2026 – London The Annual General Meeting of the International Map Collectors' Society will be held at Royal Geographical Society, Additional details to be announced.
June 6-7, 2026 - London The largest Antique Map Fair in Europe, established 1980, is the London Map Fair. It will be held in the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore. Saturday 12.00 pm to 7.00 pm and Sunday 10.00 am to 6.00 pm.
June 18, 2026 - Oxford (Online) The 33nd Annual Series Oxford Seminars In Cartography run from 4.30pm to 6.00pm (UK time) via Zoom Webinar. JNick Bolton (CEO, Ordnance Survey) will discuss Ordnance Survey: twenty-first-century National Mapping Agency. Click here to book your place. For further details please contact: Nick Millea <nick.millea(at)bodleian.ox.ac.uk>, Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG; Tel: 01865 287119. The Oxford Seminars in Cartography are supported by: The Friends of TOSCA / The Bodleian Libraries / The School of Geography and the Environment / The Charles Close Society / Lovell Johns Ltd.
July 7-11, 2026 – Prague & Brno The 31st International Conference on the History of Cartography will have as its primary venue the main building of the Faculty of Science, Charles University, Albertov 6. The theme is Bridging the Past and Present in Cartography. Additional information from <ichc2026(at)hiu.cas.cz>.
July 29-August 1, 2026 – St. John's, Newfoundland The Society for the History of Discoveries annual conference will be held at Memorial University. Wednesday, July 29 we will have a reception and presentation in the evening. Panels will run all day Thursday and Friday, with the Annual Banquet Thursday evening. Saturday, August 1, there will be optional tours/excursions. Additional details remain to be determined.
September 1-4, 2026 - London (Hybrid) The Royal Geographical Society-IBG Annual International Conference 2026 will be chaired by Professor Peter Hopkins (Newcastle University, UK), on the theme of Geographies of inequalities: toward just places. The conference will take place in the Society and Imperial College London, and online.
September 8-9, 2026 - Edinburgh The Map Curators’ Group of the British Cartographic Society will have a workshop on 8 September and the British Cartographic Society will hold its annual conference on 9 September. More details will be published shortly.
September 12, 2026 - Amsterdam The third Amsterdam Map Fair will be held at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam from 10.00 – 17.00. Free entry to The Maritime Museum, 33 national and international antiquarian map dealers will sell antique nautical charts, maps, atlases, globes and prints. With three lectures.
October 1-3, 2026 – Arlington, Texas The 15th biennial Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography will be conjoined with the Texas Map Society’s annual meeting. Both events will take place in the Central Library at the University of Texas at Arlington. The Virginia Garrett Lectures will take place on Thursday and Friday and will focus on the cartography of Antarctica. The Texas Map Society’s meeting will take place on Saturday. Additional details and registration will be available in May 2026.
October 7-10, 2026 - Denver The Western Association of Map Libraries annual conference will be held at Denver Public Library, 10 W 14th Ave.
November 9-13, 2026 - Tokyo and Kyoto The International Map Collectors' Society has been invited by the Japan Map Society to participate in a conference that they would host for international guests with most of the program in English. A pre-symposium tour is planned on 8 November to Nikko and a post-symposium tour is planned for 14-15 September to Kyushu; Japan's most southerly island. Program currently is tentative.
2027
September 8-12, 2027 – Amsterdam The International Map Collectors' Society will be holding their International Symposium around the weekend of the Amsterdam Map Fair. Dates are tentative and more information to come.