Germany States (Bundesländer) Boundaries — GeoJSON Download
Quick answer: This page hosts all 16 German federal states as a single GeoJSON FeatureCollection under 100 KB, with a map preview, DE-xx state codes for joining, and one-click download.
About this dataset
All 16 German federal states as one small hosted GeoJSON — under 100 KB, simplified from the Federal Agency for Cartography boundary data.
Download Germany state boundaries as GeoJSON: all 16 Bundesländer in a single FeatureCollection carrying shapeName (Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Berlin, Brandenburg, …), shapeISO (DE-BW, DE-BY, DE-BE), and shapeID. The geometry derives from the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) administrative boundary data at 1:250,000 and is simplified to about a 1 km tolerance, which keeps the national file under 100 KB — small enough to inline in a web bundle while still showing every state, including the city-states of Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. German state codes are the standard Eurostat NUTS 1 identifiers, so the layer joins cleanly with Eurostat, Destatis, and other European statistical tables.
Data source: Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) via geoBoundaries
How to download
- 1 Preview the state layer above — all 16 Bundesländer render from one small file.
- 2 Download the GeoJSON and open it in QGIS, ArcGIS, or GeoDataViewer Studio.
- 3 Join Destatis or Eurostat tables on shapeISO (DE-BW, DE-BY, DE-NW).
- 4 Move to the BKG VG250 files when you need districts (Kreise) or municipalities.
Hosted simplified GeoJSON (85 KB)
16 states, web-ready — used by the map preview above
Full-detail GeoJSON from geoBoundaries
Every original vertex, ~5 MB
BKG geodata centre
Official German federal geodata, including administrative areas (VG250)
geoBoundaries Germany metadata
Machine-readable licence, source, and download record
FAQ
Are all 16 federal states included?
Yes: Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hessen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thüringen.
Do the state codes match Eurostat NUTS?
Yes. German state ISO codes (DE-BW, DE-BY, DE-BE, …) are the same identifiers Eurostat uses at NUTS 1, so you can join Eurostat regional tables directly without a lookup table.
Why is this file so small compared to the US or Canada layers?
Germany has only 16 states and the official boundary data is already generalised at 1:250,000. After the ~1 km simplification pass the national file is under 100 KB.
Can I use this commercially?
Yes, under the Data licence Germany — Attribution 2.0 (dl-de/by-2-0). Commercial use is permitted; you must credit the source, conventionally '© GeoBasis-DE / BKG'.