A world map for one question: how big is it, really?

A map made for sailors

In 1569 Gerardus Mercator solved a real problem. A navigator needs a map where a straight line is a straight compass bearing, so a ship can hold one course from harbour to harbour. To make that true, his projection has to stretch land more and more the further it sits from the equator.

For navigation it is a brilliant answer. It was never meant to answer "how big is this place, really?", yet it became the familiar map on classroom walls, in atlases and later in web maps, where that question comes up all the time.

The stretch grows with distance from the equator, so places far to the north and south look larger than they are, and places near the equator look about right beside them. Africa, which straddles the equator, shows it well: lay its real outline beside the others and the United States, China, India and the whole European Union fit inside it with room to spare.

Why size on the map matters

Studies of how people judge the sizes of continents find that their guesses follow the maps they know best: places far from the equator tend to be overestimated, and places near it underestimated. That matters wherever relative size is the point, in a geography lesson or in a story about land, farming or climate.

That's the idea behind the Gall-Peters projection in the 1970s and 80s, a real and lively debate among cartographers that the Learn tab covers on its own terms, and, more recently, behind a UN resolution.

What changed on 4 September 2026

Two African non-profits, Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, started asking the UN, the World Bank and the BBC to adopt an equal-area map by default. The African Union backed it and asked Togo to carry it to the General Assembly. On 4 September 2026, the UN adopted it: 164 votes to 1, six abstentions. It doesn’t ban Mercator. It encourages schools, governments and technology companies to reach for an equal-area projection whenever relative size is the point.

Togo says it will be the first country to rewrite its own geography textbooks, and plans to host UNESCO, the African Union and mapping companies in Lomé in 2027 to help others do the same. We built EqualGlobe the week after the vote, to show what an equal-area world map can be in practice: something to explore, not just to read about.

What EqualGlobe actually is

A map you can fold. Start on Equal Earth, the projection the UN resolution points to, where every country keeps its true area. Zoom in and it folds into a globe, so you can see for yourself why no flat map, Equal Earth included, gets everything right at once. Zoom further and it becomes a street map, where Mercator's faithful shapes are exactly what you want.

Beyond the map: Compare, to drag countries, continents and unions onto each other at true scale; Learn, guided stories on how the Earth works (its imaginary lines, the seasons, time zones, how far away the planets are) and short chapters on the history of maps; and Play, two daily games: which of two countries is bigger, and Find it, where you tap continents, oceans, lines and places. Then it leaves the Earth: a live solar system, the same map on the Moon, Mars and every planet, and their landmarks brought back to the Earth at true size, so Olympus Mons can sit on France.

No accounts. No paywall. No ads. It works offline after the first visit, in English and in French. It runs on Natural Earth's public domain geography, OpenStreetMap's street data and NASA's pictures of the planets. Nothing about the world in this app was invented to make a point, including the numbers above.

Who it's for

Built for anyone who needs the true size of a place to matter for a moment. Here's who tends to reach for it, and where each starts.

• Teachers. Project it on the board or hand it to small groups. There are lesson guides for primary geography and for Year 5 Earth and space, each point a link that opens the map in the right place. No sign-in, nothing to install.
• Students, and anyone learning alone. Start with Learn: guided stories walk through how the Earth works (its imaginary lines, the seasons, time zones) and the history of maps, then Play turns it into two short daily games.
• Parents, and children exploring at home. Fly to Mars, find out why Greenland looks so big, or ask which country is bigger over breakfast. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to buy.
• Writers, editors, and journalists. Compare computes real spherical area, not a guess, and Share turns any comparison into a captioned image or a link with the exact view built into the address, ready to cite, embed, or drop straight into a piece.
• Anyone explaining the 2026 UN vote to someone else. If you're the one telling a colleague, a class, or a group chat why the UN voted 164 to 1 to encourage equal-area maps, this page and the map itself take about as long to show as to say.