After 16 years, the OSM WMS – osm-wms.de website and the underlying map service will be shut down at the end of March 2025.
Back when the project went online in February 2009, the unique feature was that we were able to deliver the data of the still young OSM project not only as tiles, but also in the standardized OGC WMS format. At that time, desktop GIS programs such as QGIS were not yet able to use tile maps as a layer source. The OGC-WMS interface made it possible for OSM maps to be used easily in all conventional GIS environments with OGC interoperability.
Nowadays, OSM data can be used as both raster and vector tiles in a wide range of desktop and web applications, with numerous commercial and non-commercial providers offering OSM map data.
For this reason, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the osm-wms.de service after 16 years. Instead, we will focus our time and resources on making OSM data more accessible for humanitarian purposes and efforts to combat climate change.
Milestones of the Platform
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February 13, 2009: osm-wms.de goes live.
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June 5, 2009: A hillshade layer for Europe is released.
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July 8, 2009: The hillshade layer processing is presented at the AGIT poster session in Salzburg.
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Reference: Auer, M., Fees, M., Neubauer, S., Over, M. (2009): A Workflow for Processing a Hillshade WMS-Layer for Entire Europe Based on SRTM – The Case of osm-wms.de . AGIT 2009. Symposium for Applied Informatics. Salzburg, Austria.
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January 31, 2012: The data processing methodology using Osmosis and PostGIS is presented at the GEOProcessing conference in Valencia and later published as a conference paper.
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Reference: Goetz, M., Lauer, J., Auer, A. (2012): An Algorithm-Based Methodology for the Creation of a Regularly Updated Global Online Map Derived from Volunteered Geographic Information. The Fourth International Conference on Advanced Geographic Information Systems, Applications, and Services. GEOProcessing 2012. Valencia, Spain.
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October 2018: A new, modernized version of the website is released and hosted by HeiGIT.
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March 31, 2025: osm-wms.de goes offline.
Map Style
The map style of osm-wms.de was frequently adjusted and refined, especially in the early days. Since there are no rigid rules for tagging map content in OSM and the number of object types mapped by the community continues to grow, increasingly sophisticated rendering rules had to be developed to keep up with OSM’s so-called “folksonomy.”
Initially, there was even a rendering rule that displayed all new, previously unknown objects on the map in orange. This allowed users to quickly spot changes in the tagging schema, signaling when further adjustments to the map style were necessary.
Alternatives
While the discontinuation of osm-wms.de undoubtedly leaves a gap, there are numerous alternatives available for users relying on raster tiles and WMS services. A comprehensive list of alternative services can be found on:
Goodbye
The shutdown of osm-wms.de marks the end of a long and successful chapter for one of the early map services supporting the OpenStreetMap community. However, this is not a reason for sadness. Instead, it opens up opportunities to focus our time and resources on making OSM data and applications even more accessible—especially to accelerate HeiGIT’s goals in the humanitarian sector and climate action.
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to osm-wms.de and to all those who used it for good causes!
A set of images of the early days of osm-wms.de (2009):
