Patch Notes

Every update, every patch

ExplorersMap ships constantly. Here's the whole journey - from v1.0 to v4.5, newest first.

  1. v4.5LanguagesLATESTMAJOR

    ExplorersMap in French, Spanish and Portuguese 🌍

    • ExplorersMap now speaks four languages: English, Français, Español and Português (Brasil). The map, your profile, Trips, Passport, Achievements, the leaderboards, ExploreDex, Earth, Account settings and every game follow the language you pick.
    • It picks your browser's language the first time you visit, and you can switch any time in Account settings or from the language links at the bottom of every page.
    • All twelve travel guides and both culinary guides are fully translated, and the homepage, Features and the games hub have their own French, Spanish and Portuguese pages.
    • The Daily Quiz asks its questions in your language, country names follow it everywhere, and in the World Cup game and Top Lists you can type country names in any of the four languages.
    • Connecting an AI assistant is now two clicks: in Claude or ChatGPT, add explorersmap.net/mcp as a connector, sign in and press Allow. No token to copy. Connected apps show up in Account settings, where you can disconnect them.
    • Your saved map is unchanged: places are still stored once, whatever language you browse in.
  2. v4.4GuidesMAJOR

    Travel guides and culinary guides 🧭

    • Guides are here: twelve countries, picked from where our own explorers actually went, and far enough off the usual circuit to be worth writing about. Slovenia, Iceland, Vietnam, Morocco, South Korea, Montenegro and more.
    • Each guide says what the place is really like, with itineraries for different kinds of traveller, things to do, practical tips and a map of everything mentioned. And the part no guidebook has: how many of us have been, how far into the country we went, and where we went next.
    • New: culinary guides, starting with Portugal and Slovenia. The dishes worth the trip, what to drink, and where to eat them, from a sandwich counter to Michelin stars. Every restaurant is checked by hand and the date is on the page, with a link to its own site and to Google Maps.
    • The Slovenia food guide follows the travel guide's four-day route with somewhere good to eat at every stop, and Portugal gets its own week eating north to south.
    • Find them under Guides in the main menu, or at explorersmap.net/guides.
    • Homeground now counts real populations. Before, a region was worth only the people living in the cities we list for it, so Uttar Pradesh counted 35 million people instead of its 246 million, and all of India barely 400 million. Now every region with an official figure uses it, India adds up to over 1.2 billion, and completing the whole world is worth over 7 billion. Thanks to the player who spotted it!
    • Also: links to ExplorersMap shared on Facebook, Threads and elsewhere now show the right page's card instead of the homepage.
  3. v4.3PassportMAJOR

    Your travel passport, Trips and a new menu 🛂

    • Meet your explorer passport: every country, region and place on your map as one passport-style card, with a world map, your flags, a stamp for every country dated from your trips, and a machine-readable line at the bottom like the real thing.
    • Pick Night or Day, size it for a post or a story, and download or share it in one tap. Anyone can see yours at explorersmap.net/u/yourname/passport.
    • Timeline is now called Trips. Its map was rebuilt from scratch: countries you've taken trips to light up, your latest trips are joined by arcs in the order you took them, and a trip through several countries gets a stop in each. Old Timeline links still work.
    • Passport, Trips and the Feed are now tools of their own in the main menu, and the Feed shows posts arriving the way X does: placeholder cards first, then each Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or X post fades in without pushing the page around.
    • On a computer, the top bar now has colour-coded shortcuts to Trips, Passport, Games, Leaderboard and Achievements.
  4. v4.2EarthMAJOR

    Earth mode: where everyone has been 🌍

    • A new mode that puts the whole community on one planet. Earth shows how many explorers have been to each country, region and place, as a heatmap on a spinning globe or a flat world map.
    • Drag to turn the globe, scroll or pinch to zoom, and hover or tap anything to see its numbers. Pick a country from the most-visited list and the globe flies to it.
    • Slide back through the weeks and watch the map fill in from the first marks in April to today, or press play and watch it grow on its own.
    • Only public accounts count, and anything fewer than 3 explorers have been to stays hidden, so nobody's travels can be picked out.
  5. v4.1Design

    Dark mode is here 🌙

    • ExplorersMap now has a proper dark mode. It follows your phone or computer automatically, or tap the moon in the top bar to switch. Your choice is saved to your account, so it follows you to every device.
    • The map goes night-time: visited countries glow violet on a deep navy sea, and the street map in Explore mode turns dark too.
    • Regions keep their four colours, retuned for the dark: coral for lived, gold for slept, violet for visited and green for passed through. Badges, levels and ranks were retuned the same way, so an earned badge always stands out.
    • Every page, game and result screen was redone for it, from the campaign trail to the leaderboards, where the bright artwork now sits behind a dusk veil instead of glaring at you at night.
    • Prefer to follow your device? Account settings, Appearance: Auto, Light or Dark.
    • Also new since v4.0: a short guide on the map for first-time visitors, the map remembers whether you left the side panel open, and a proper setup page for connecting ExplorersMap to Claude, Cursor or VS Code at explorersmap.net/mcp.
  6. v4.0MapMAJOR

    ExplorersMap MCP 🤖

    • ExplorersMap now speaks MCP - the protocol AI assistants use to plug into other tools. Connect it to Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client and you can simply say “I was in Portugal and Spain in May, add those and make it a trip called Iberia”, and watch your map fill in. Seventeen things it can do, from marking a country to naming a région you slept in to attaching places to a trip.
    • Setup is one step: generate a token in Account settings and paste it into your assistant. It only ever touches your own account - it cannot read or change anyone else's - and you can revoke it from the same screen the moment you want to.
    • Free accounts get 25 changes and 500 lookups a day, which comfortably covers a real trip's worth of marking. Pathfinder members get no limit at all, on top of the badge.
    • New in the ExploreDex: Pills & Ranks, every badge you can wear and exactly how to earn it - all six Explorer levels, all seven ranks, and the first honest explanation of how Explorer XP and Renown are actually earned. Hover any pill on the leaderboard for the short version, click it for the long one.
    • The homepage now shows what's new, and the mobile hero lost about a third of its height - so on a phone you reach the main modes without scrolling past a wall of headline.
  7. v3.9Games

    Jigsaw fixes & all 38 provinces 🧩

    • Puzzle: the sign-in button works again, and the results panel can finally be dismissed - so you can sit back and admire the picture you just finished instead of staring at your own stats.
    • The jigsaw leaderboard was a wall of near-identical filters. Picking a scene and a piece count is a two-second job now.
    • Finish a run in any game and the save-your-score prompt actually tells you what to do next, instead of sitting there as a grey line.
    • Timeline import got pickier, in the best way. It now judges each kind of place on its own terms - how close you got and how long you stayed - so driving past a museum stops counting as visiting it. It also checks what you have already marked, so it quits offering you places you have had for months.
    • Indonesia has all 38 of its provinces on the map: North Kalimantan, plus the four carved out of Papua. Thanks to the explorer who noticed we were five short - keep them coming.
    • The “Down Under” jigsaw is now called Oceania, because that is what it shows - the scene runs from the Opera House to Easter Island and New Zealand, so naming it for Australia alone was misleading. The Stamp Collection puzzle has been retired.
  8. v3.8Games

    Every Wilmington counts 🏙️

    • Same name, different state, both count. Cities and Homeground now keep namesakes apart, so Wilmington in Delaware is its own city and not a ghost of the one in North Carolina. Nearly 17,000 towns quietly came back to life - the city list went from 183,000 to 200,118.
    • Type it the way you say it. Mecca, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Saigon, Kiev, Peking and a few dozen others now land on the right city instead of nothing at all.
    • New toggle: Group cities by name. Flip it on and a single guess claims every city sharing that name - all the Springfields in one go. In Cities and Homeground both.
    • Founding Pioneer 🏅 - we passed 100 explorers, and the most active among you now wear a Pioneer pill on profiles and leaderboards. Not your style? Hide it in account settings, like any other badge.
    • The explore map now falls back to OpenStreetMap when Google's tiles refuse to load, so it stays usable instead of going blank on you.
  9. v3.7game

    11 new jigsaws 🧩

    • The puzzle library just about doubled - 11 fresh scenes join the collection, for 24 in all. Travel the world one piece at a time: African Wonders, Down Under, Arabian Nights, Paris, New York, Japan, Rio, the Alps, Iceland's fire and ice, the Amazon, and the penguins-and-aurora Frozen South.
    • Each one plays from a breezy 12 pieces up to a 504-piece marathon, with its own leaderboards - so there's a new personal best waiting on every board.
    • Homeground is out of beta, too, with a round of accuracy fixes so more cities land in exactly the right region.
  10. v3.6game

    Pause the clock ⏸

    • Need to grab the door or refill your coffee mid-run? The timed naming games - Countries, Cities and Regions - now have a Pause button. The clock stops, the board hides, and you pick up exactly where you left off. Tap Pause or just press Esc.
    • It's fair, too: while you're paused the map and your list are tucked away, so a break is a break - not a chance to study the board.
  11. v3.5Timeline

    The Feed 📣

    • Your Timeline is now a feed. Post a travel moment, or paste an Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or X link and it drops in as the real, playable post - no leaving the site. Your map and your moments, finally in one place.
    • Follow fellow explorers and their posts land in your feed. Find people by username, from the leaderboard, or on any profile - plus a Discover feed of the community while you build your own, and a Friends page to see who follows you back.
    • You choose who sees what. Post to Everyone or just your Followers - and switch your whole account to Private, so new followers need your approval. Your profile, map and leaderboard rank always stay public.
    • Little things: edit a post within 15 minutes, delete anytime, and block or report anyone in a tap.
  12. v3.4Map

    Natural Wonders 🏞️

    • A whole new set to collect: Natural Wonders. Around 255 of the planet's greatest natural spectacles - Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, Victoria and Angel Falls, Iceland's Gullfoss and Skógafoss, volcanoes like Teide, deserts from the Sahara to the Atacama, and Kyoto's Arashiyama bamboo grove. Each gets its own colour on the map, earns XP, and forms a new collection to complete in the ExploreDex.
    • Homeground got a glow-up: fill every region of a country and the whole thing turns gold, its name celebrated the moment you complete it - and you'll watch a country heat up from green as you close in on 100%.
    • Smaller fixes: the city games now recognise names like Bodø, Tromsø and Nara (plain spellings too), and dragging a jigsaw piece on a Mac trackpad no longer scrolls the piece tray.
  13. v3.3game

    Homeground 🗺️

    • A brand-new geography game. Name any city and it claims its whole region - say “Bordeaux” and all of Gironde lights up, worth its full population, not just the city's. Fill the world's states, provinces and départements one city at a time, and find out how well you really know your own backyard. Nobody knows your patch like you do.
    • We also went on a landmark hunt: over a thousand famous sites were added to the map - temples, shrines, cathedrals, castles, palaces and squares, from Sensō-ji and Fushimi Inari to the Shwedagon Pagoda and Alexanderplatz. Whole corners of the world just got much richer to explore and collect.
    • A few smaller fixes too: the Cities game now understands “Saint” names like Saint Louis and Saint-Étienne, and the jigsaw's finish screen fits neatly on laptop screens again.
  14. v3.2Map

    Wildlife 🦁

    • There's a whole new kind of place to track: wildlife. Around 225 of the world's most notable zoos, aquariums, safari parks, bird parks, marine parks and butterfly houses - from Berlin Zoo and the Georgia Aquarium to San Diego's safari and Tenerife's Loro Parque. Click the ones you've been to and watch them appear on your map.
    • It's the full treatment, not a side note: wildlife gets its own filter and counter on the map, earns XP like everywhere else, unlocks a new badge line - from Wildlife Watcher all the way up to Ark Keeper - and forms its own set to complete in the ExploreDex.
    • Six kinds of place in one category, because a day at the aquarium and a drive through a safari park are both worth remembering.
  15. v3.1Sharing

    Share your map 🗺️

    • There's a new Share button on your map, and it turns your travels into a poster worth showing off - your countries (or regions, or places) painted across the world with your stats beside them. Pick a colour, zoom to a whole continent or a single country, drag the numbers wherever you like, go light or dark, then download it or send it straight to your socials.
    • Your profile link got a glow-up too. Paste it into X, WhatsApp, Discord, a group chat - anywhere - and it now unfurls into your actual map, countries and all, with your share of the world explored right there in the preview. No more grey placeholder.
    • Posting to Instagram? There's a square export made to fit the feed. And on X you can share it as a little animation - your countries fill in across the globe while the counter climbs - which X plays inline like a video.
  16. v3.0gameMAJOR

    Space 🪐

    • There's a whole new mode: a 3D solar system you can fly through. Every planet sits where it actually is right now - real orbital positions, not decoration - with its moons around it. Fly to any of them, spin the clock forward, and watch Mars race around while Neptune barely stirs.
    • Turn on satellites and thousands of them appear around Earth, in their real positions from live tracking data - pick just the ISS and the crewed stations, the whole Starlink shell, or every tracked object at once. Hover any dot to find out what it is; most of them, it turns out, are junk.
    • A couple of buttons for the wonder of it: line the Moon up for a total solar eclipse (it and the Sun really are the same apparent size - a coincidence we happen to live inside), jump to the closest the planets get to a straight line in the next 500 years (spoiler: not very), or fly all the way out to Voyager 1, 168 AU from home and still going.
    • Remember those three space badges we greyed out as "Soon"? There's somewhere to go now. Reach low Earth orbit, the Moon, or Mars in the explorer and they're yours.
    • It's a lot of sky to fly through, so it's built for desktop and tablet rather than phones.
  17. v2.18game

    Landmark Jigsaw Puzzles 🧩

    • A new game: jigsaw puzzles made from gorgeous pictures of the world's landmarks and wild places - the Seven Wonders, Cappadocia's balloons at dawn, a coral reef, the dunes of the Sahara. Thirteen to start, with more on the way.
    • Pick your challenge, from a relaxed 12 pieces to a 504-piece marathon and everything in between. The board pans and zooms, so even the big ones stay comfortable - no squinting at a tray of tiny pieces.
    • Every puzzle is timed, and your best time for each picture and piece count goes on a global leaderboard. Your progress saves as you go, so you can leave a hard one half-finished and pick it up later.
  18. v2.17Map

    Museums & ski resorts 🖼️🎿

    • Two new kinds of place to collect: over 2,000 of the world's museums - the Louvre, the Smithsonian, the British Museum, the Prado - and the great ski resorts, from Val-d'Isère to St. Anton.
    • Museums are worth 5 XP each, ski resorts 4, with their own badge ladders - work your way from First Exhibit to Museum Master, and First Tracks to Alpine Legend.
    • They slot straight into your Detailed dashboard and the Explore filters, each with its own colour on the map.
  19. v2.16Profiles

    Badges, straightened out 🧭

    • Continental Sovereign was quietly asking for the same six continents as Six Continents - two badges for one achievement. It now means what the name says: all seven, Antarctica included. If you were holding it for six, it's gone from your profile and the XP with it. That stings, and we're sorry - but it was wrong, and better fixed now than left to harden.
    • Cardinal Explorer used to hinge on your four most extreme pins being four different places, which meant a new trip could silently take it back off you. Now it asks for real distance in every direction - past 35°N, 30°S, 90°E and 90°W. Earn it once and it's yours for good.
    • The three space badges are honest about themselves now: greyed out as "Soon", because there's nowhere up there to visit yet.
  20. v2.15Map

    One site, one pin 🏛️

    • Our UNESCO layer had a habit of stacking dots: 22 of them scattered across a Portuguese valley for a single rock-art site, 53 in Cusco, 30 in Genoa. 244 duplicate pins are gone and the map reads like a map again.
    • The ones you'd actually miss are untouched - the Colosseum, the Pyramids of Giza, the Alhambra, Mont-Saint-Michel, Mount Fuji, and all seven wonders are exactly where you left them.
    • Two names had been wrong for longer than we'd like to admit: "Snta Maria delle Grazie" is now spelled properly, and the Cave of Altamira is no longer filed under a name that isn't a place.
  21. v2.14Map

    The map, in detail 📊

    • A new Detailed layout moves your stats out of a cramped sidebar and into proper dashboards under the map - rings, bars and a real breakdown for every country, region and place type. Pick your layout once and we'll remember it.
    • Regions now load at any zoom, with a brief loading screen instead of making you zoom in and hope. The geometry is less than half its old size, so it's quicker with it.
    • The Explore sidebar is far leaner, the place list is clean and dense, and the type filter is back somewhere you can actually find it.
  22. v2.13Games

    Top 10s & Top 20s ⏱️

    • Seven fast quizzes against the clock: name the 20 most populous countries, the biggest cities, the most-visited landmarks - plus most-populous rundowns for Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
    • Every answer drops into its ranked spot as you type it. Beat the timer, then see what you missed.
    • Each quiz keeps its own leaderboard.
  23. v2.12Games

    Boomtown - the merge game 🏙️

    • A brand-new puzzle in the spirit of 2048: swipe to slide the board, and two matching places merge into a bigger one. Grow a humble Hamlet all the way up to the World Capital.
    • One thumb, endless, and quietly addictive - perfect for a phone. Plan your merges or the board fills up.
    • Your best run climbs the leaderboard.
  24. v2.11Games

    Two new games - one made for your phone 📱

    • Higher or Lower: which country has more people? One tap, no typing - just guess Higher or Lower and see how long a streak you can string together. It's endless, it's quick, and it's genuinely hard to put down on a phone.
    • Name the Landmarks: race to name the world's most-visited wonders, scored by how many people visit each one every year. From the Forbidden City to the Colosseum, the big ones are worth the most.
    • Both games have their own leaderboards - climb them.
  25. v2.10Games

    Name the Regions 🗺️

    • A brand-new game: how many US states can you name? Or French départements, Japanese prefectures, German Länder, Canadian provinces, and more - ten region sets in all.
    • Every name you get lights up on the map as you type - Alaska, Corsica, Hokkaidō and everywhere in between. Accents and macrons don't matter: type "Isere" or "Osaka" and it just works.
    • Race the 5- or 10-minute clock, or take Unlimited and try to name them all. Each set has its own leaderboard.
  26. v2.9Games

    The Cities game, leveled up 🏙️

    • Way more cities: name any of 183,000 places on Earth - every city and town with 500+ people. Dallas, Jacksonville, Venice and thousands more are finally in.
    • A cinematic new results screen - a golden-hour explorer's vista, your score writ large, and a celebration when you crack the top 100 of a leaderboard.
    • Unlimited mode now saves as you go: leave and pick up exactly where you left off.
    • Hit Leaderboard after a game and you land on that exact mode's board.
    • A fresh coat of paint across the site - a shinier top bar and one-tap hops between the Explorer and Game leaderboards.
  27. v2.8Map

    Find your way around the map

    • New gentle nudges help you discover everything the map can do - save your map once you've marked 10, then get pointed toward Regions and Explore modes as you go.
  28. v2.7Games

    Race your ghost 👻

    • Every Cities and Countries game now races a ghost - your own personal best, or the current #1's run - so you can see if you're ahead while you play.
  29. v2.6Streaks

    Streaks & freezes, done right 🔥

    • A brand-new daily streak with a calendar that fills in day by day.
    • Freezes now protect a missed day automatically - and they're something you earn, not farm.
    • Streaks reward real daily effort (a quiz or a campaign level), not idle clicks.
    • Missed days you've protected show up as little ice cubes 🧊 on your calendar.
  30. v2.5Design

    A whole new look

    • Redesigned home menu with artwork for every mode, cleaner navigation, and a proper hero landing page.
    • Fresh profile layout, themed page backgrounds, and little celebration screens when you finish a run.
    • Added an all-time Renown leaderboard, and streak flames now show on the main leaderboard.
  31. v2.4CampaignMAJOR

    The Campaign 🧭

    • Launched Campaign mode: a 500+ level journey that ramps from gentle to legendary, with boss levels, kind intros, fog of war, and star-gates so you never quite know how far the trail goes.
    • Provisions (hearts) give each run real stakes - refill with a heart pack if you run dry.
  32. v2.3Games

    New ways to play

    • The Daily Geo Quiz - a fresh set of questions every day to keep your streak alive.
    • New game types: Locate (click the country on the map), Trivia (space & exploration), Odd One Out, and photo-guess Monuments.
  33. v2.2Profiles

    See where your XP comes from

    • Tap your XP bar on the Achievements page for a full breakdown - countries, regions, places by type, trips, and badges by rarity.
  34. v2.1Games

    World Cup 2026 mode 🏆

    • A limited-edition game for the tournament: can you name all 48 qualified nations before the clock runs out? Grouped by confederation, with its own leaderboard.
  35. v2.0TimelineMAJOR

    Your travel Timeline ✈️

    • Turn your travels into a timeline: log trips with dates, countries, cities and a day-by-day itinerary.
    • Add photos to your trips (with location data stripped for privacy), browse them in a fullscreen lightbox, and flip between a Passport and a List view.
    • Share your timeline publicly from your profile - a living history of everywhere you've been.
  36. v1.8Profiles

    Profiles that grow with you

    • Public profiles now show a view counter, and Rarest Finds highlights your rarest place in each category, not just an overall top six.
  37. v1.7Map

    Sign in your way + the game hub

    • Added email & password sign-in alongside Google, with usernames and email verification.
    • New /menu hub - a game-style home for every mode.
    • Guests who mark 10 countries now get a friendly nudge to save their map.
  38. v1.6Games

    Play in your language 🌍

    • The geography game now understands country names in 10 languages.
  39. v1.5Map

    Sharper regions, faster maps

    • Regions mode overhaul: four visit levels, cleaner borders, lakes, and higher-resolution country outlines.
    • Explore mode gained Michelin restaurants and 5-star hotels, plus a big performance pass so panning and zooming stay smooth.
  40. v1.4Space

    Space Tracker 🚀

    • A whole solar system to explore - track the ISS, the Moon, and Mars, with clickable planets and a few hidden easter eggs.
  41. v1.3Design

    Worlds: 360° panoramas

    • An immersive, parallax panorama explorer - step inside a set of breathtaking worlds.
  42. v1.2Map

    Explore deeper

    • More places to collect: train stations, stadiums, beaches, parks and attractions joined cities, airports and heritage sites.
    • New rarity system surfaces your Rarest Finds, plus a curated set of explorer avatars.
  43. v1.1Games

    The geography game + progression

    • Launched the name-the-countries game with a global leaderboard.
    • Added the XP and level system, achievement badges, and the XP bar in the navbar - travel and play now level you up.
  44. v1.0MapMAJOR

    ExplorersMap is born 🗺️

    • The first release: an interactive world map to mark every country you've visited, see your stats and completion percentage, and share a public travel profile.
    • Regions mode with 4,500+ states and provinces worldwide, plus Explorer mode for pinning the actual cities and places you've been.
    • Works before you even sign up - your map saves locally and moves with you when you create an account.