Announcing MapLibre Tile: a modern and efficient vector tile format | MapLibre

About Jobs Roadmap Sponsors News Community Announcing MapLibre Tile: a modern and efficient vector tile format Jan 23, 2026
Categories: Announcements
Authors: Bart Louwers Ramya Ragupathy Today we are happy to announce MapLibre Tile (MLT), a new modern and efficient vector tile format.

What is MapLibre Tile?
MapLibre Tile (MLT) is a succesor to Mapbox Vector Tile (MVT).
It has been redesigned from the ground up to address the challenges of rapidly growing geospatial data volumes
and complex next-generation geospatial source formats, as well as to leverage the capabilities of modern hardware and APIs.
MLT is specifically designed for modern and next-generation graphics APIs to enable high-performance processing and rendering of
large (planet-scale) 2D and 2.5 basemaps. This current implementation offers feature parity with MVT1 while delivering on the following:

Improved compression ratio: up to 6x on large tiles, based on a column-oriented layout with recursively applied (custom)
lightweight encodings. This leads to reduced latency, storage, and egress costs and, in particular, improved cache utilization.
Better decoding performance: fast, lightweight encodings that can be used in combination with SIMD/vectorization instructions.

In addition, MLT was designed to support the following use cases in the future:

Improved support for 3D coordinates, i.e. elevation.
Improved processing performance, based on storage and in-memory formats that are specifically designed for modern graphics APIs,
allowing for efficient processing on both CPU and GPU. The formats are designed to be loaded into GPU buffers with little or no additional processing.
Support for linear referencing and m-values to efficiently support the upcoming next-generation source formats such as Overture Maps (GeoParquet).
Support complex types, including nested properties, lists and maps.

As with any MapLibre project, the future of MLT is decided by the needs of the community. There are a lot of exciting ideas for other future extensions and we welcome contributions to the project.
For a more in-depth exploration of MLT have a look at the following slides, watch
this talk or read this publication by MLT inventor Markus Tremmel.
When can I use it?
For the adventurous, the answer is: today. Both MapLibre GL JS and MapLibre Native now support MLT sources. You can use the new encoding property on sources in your style JSON with a value of mlt for MLT vector tile sources.
To try out MLT, you have the following options:

The easiest way to try out MLT is to use the MLT-based demotiles style.
You can also try out the encoding server that converts existing (MVT-based) styles and vector tile sources to MLT on the fly. This is mostly a tool for development.
To create tiles for production, you could use Planetiler, as the upcoming version will support generating MLTs.

Refer to this page for a complete and up-to-date list of integrations and implementations. If you are an integrator working on supporting MLT, feel free to add your own project there.
We would love to hear your experience with using MLT! Join the #maplibre-tile-format channel on our Slack or create an Issue or Discussion on the tile spec repo.
Acknowledgements
MapLibre Tile came to be thanks to a multi-year collaboration between academia, open source and enterprise. Thank you to everyone who was involved! We are very proud that our community can innovate like this.
Special thanks go to Markus Tremmel for inventing the format, Yuri Astrakhan for spearheading the project, Tim Sylvester for the C++ implementation, Harel Mazor, Benedikt Vogl and Niklas Greindl for working on the JavaScript implementation.
Also thanks to Microsoft and AWS for financing work on MLT.
Footnotes

One exception: unlike MVT, MLT does not support layers where a value in a column changes type from feature to feature. ↩

MapLibre Tile (MLT) represents a significant evolution in geospatial data formats, designed to address the increasing demands of modern mapping applications and large-scale basemap creation. This new format, spearheaded by Bart Louwers, Ramya Ragupathy, and inventor Markus Tremmel, serves as a successor to Mapbox Vector Tile (MVT), specifically engineered to optimize performance and efficiency for next-generation graphics APIs and planet-scale data.

A core design principle of MLT is substantially improved compression, achieving ratios up to six times greater than MVT, primarily through a column-oriented layout combined with custom, lightweight encodings. This enhanced compression directly translates to reduced latency, decreased storage requirements, and lower egress costs – notably improved cache utilization. Furthermore, MLT is built for faster decoding, utilizing lightweight encodings that work well with SIMD/vectorization instructions, streamlining processing across both CPU and GPU environments.

Looking ahead, MLT is proactively designed to support evolving geospatial source formats like Overture Maps (GeoParquet) via features such as support for linear referencing and m-values, alongside the capability to handle complex data types including nested properties, lists, and maps. This forward-thinking approach ensures MLT’s relevance within the continually developing landscape of geospatial data.

The implementation of MLT is currently available for use with MapLibre GL JS and MapLibre Native, offering immediate adoption through the use of the new encoding property within style JSON files – specifically setting the value to ‘mlt’. Practical experimentation is facilitated through readily available tools, including the MLT-based demotiles style and an encoding server that converts existing MVT-based styles to MLT on the fly (primarily for development purposes). As it matures, integration with Planetiler, anticipated to support MLT tile generation, will offer a streamlined pathway toward production use.

The development of MLT has benefited from a collaborative effort involving academia, open-source communities, and enterprise partners, with financial support provided by Microsoft and AWS. The project's trajectory is driven by the needs of the MapLibre community, encouraging contributions and innovation. Users can share their experiences and provide feedback through the #maplibre-tile-format channel on Slack or by submitting issues and discussions on the tile spec repository.