OpenStreetMap Cities, Towns & Villages — Global Snapshot
Quick answer: Download city, town, and village locations from OpenStreetMap as GeoJSON — ideal for settlement mapping and population geography.
Choose reference cities or inspect the OSM snapshot
- 1.For a compact country selection, use the Natural Earth 10m tools. These contain selected cities and towns, not every settlement.
- 2.For OpenStreetMap settlements, use the separate OSM global dataset linked here. Its per-country extracts are unavailable; it is a different source with different coverage.
- 3.Keep the original source fields and attribution. Query the Natural Earth reference or your own point file by distance, then export the matching points.
About this dataset
Global settlement points from OpenStreetMap, with place tags for city, town and village. Download the global snapshot and filter locally.
Download populated place locations worldwide from OpenStreetMap using place=city/town/village tags. The global GeoJSON snapshot is about 61 MB. It includes settlement tags but no reliable country attribute; this page does not offer per-country extracts. Use the separate Natural Earth country tool for a smaller curated reference layer.
Actual dataset map screenshot; map and basemap credits are shown in the image. Captured 30 September 2026.
How to download
- 1 Download the global settlements GeoJSON (about 61 MB); per-country OSM files are not available here.
- 2 Open in GeoDataViewer Studio by dragging the file onto the map.
- 3 Filter by place type (city/town/village) using the attribute table.
FAQ
What settlement types are included?
The dataset includes place=city, place=town, and place=village nodes from OpenStreetMap, covering all three major settlement classifications.
How does this compare to Natural Earth Populated Places?
Natural Earth provides a curated global set (~7k cities). OSM data is more comprehensive but less vetted — tens of thousands of settlements with varying quality.