About the Atlas

Our mission

Atlas of Today’s World helps anyone understand today’s world in its geographic context — free to read, without advertising and without an account. We are a non-profit, non-governmental organization registered in the Czech Republic since 2016, supported by our readers through Atlas Patrons.

What, Why & How

Why: a missing complete picture for non-experts

Thanks to the global media environment, we currently have access to knowledge about almost any specific issue from around the world at our fingertips. The journalistic media provide news, stories or explainers, experts offer analyses and explanations, and Wikipedia, as well as AI research tools, offer user-friendly introductions to nearly any specific topic.

However, despite this scope, there is no single resource, in which anyone (and primarily non-expert audiences) could see a complete, accurate picture of the current broad socio-political situation in today's world.

How: created mostly by experts, popularised for everyone

1. Entries written by experts. The encyclopedia is built on big-picture entries that give comprehensive overviews in a user-friendly format. For each entry we seek a relevant specialist — mostly academics from universities and research centres, but also researchers from respected NGOs, neutral think tanks and specialised journalists.

2. Embedded into a world map. The encyclopedia sits on an interactive socio-political map of the world. Bringing together existing data, country profiles with recommended third-party resources and visualisations of global issues, it lets everyone see the complete picture in a compact, easy-to-use way.

3. Descriptive and neutral. By avoiding political and ethical associations and staying open to new ideas, we want to be an informative source for people of all backgrounds.

4. Easy to reach. Inspired by encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and Britannica, we want to be at hand whenever people need the global picture — connected with search engines and selected Wikipedia entries, and through partnerships with journalists, NGOs and influencers.

5. Multilingual. The Atlas is written in English but not only for English speakers: to make it available to anyone anywhere, we will work with translators and AI translation tools.

6. Member-funded. We are a non-profit, non-governmental initiative funded primarily by our membership community, supported by institutional or private grants and cooperation with universities and NGOs — so our members are always at the core of what we do.

Our story

From volunteering during the refugee crisis to the student-governed Online Encyclopedia of Migration, our concern has always been the limitations and gaps of the media system. In response, we set out to design a broader source through which everyone can understand the global socio-political situation. Here it is: Atlas of Today’s World.

2015–2019: Refugee crisis and the Online Encyclopedia of Migration

During the refugee crisis in 2015, while handing out water and blankets to Syrian refugees in the Balkans, we saw the limits of the media system first-hand. Why had these people been forced to flee? Why were they afraid for their relatives? What was everyday life in Aleppo really like? Their names and migration stories were reported, but deeper knowledge about life in Syria was not available to the wider world.

To address this, in 2017 we launched the Online Encyclopedia of Migration, a digital platform with well-researched information about migration to Europe and the situation in the countries of origin, available to everyone. Working with academic institutions, NGOs and media in the Czech Republic, we created special feature projects: A Story of the War in Syria and a project on migrant integration models in Germany, France and Austria, Went to Europe.

2019–2022: Designing Atlas of Today’s World

The project taught us a lot and led us to analyse the media system and its limits on a global level. From there, we decided to design a broader information source through which everyone can understand the overall socio-political situation in today’s world.

May 2024: The prototype and the first community launch

The first version of the encyclopedia came with initial previews — the Russia–Ukraine war, global issues and Russia — and our first attempt to build a membership community in June and July 2024.

2026: The Middle East portrait and Atlas Patrons

We have prepared a portrait of the Middle East and North Africa, the first of nine world regions, and we keep looking for authors for the planned entries and building partnerships. We are renewing our membership community, looking for 1,000 Atlas Patrons who would allow us to partly professionalise the team.

During autumn 2026, we also developed a full website with an interactive world map.

Next: regular content

We want to publish new content regularly — portraits of the other eight world regions and of global issues — build partnerships with research institutions, NGOs, influencers and media to create new content and bring it to people around the world.

A concept built on cooperation and partnerships

Content. We do not write the content ourselves. Our role is similar to that of an academic journal: we build the infrastructure and do the editorial work, and invite scholars and other specialists from all over the world to contribute.

Impact. Through partnerships across the global media system, we want to bring the Atlas to everyone in the moments they need it most, so it is easy to reach for anyone anywhere.

• Academic partners help us find specialists and keep the content accurate and neutral.

• Funding partners help us develop faster and fund specific projects.

• Media partners help bring our entries to the public through links, quotations, interactive info boxes and other paths.

Who we are

We are an international team of six people who work remotely, mostly as volunteers, combining knowledge of the humanities and social sciences with skills in IT, marketing and media studies. Over almost ten years, around 200 people have been involved in the project. We are a non-profit, non-governmental organisation registered in the Czech Republic since 2016 (originally as Online encyklopedie migrace, z. s.; see the public register).

• Jakub Mucka — Founder & CEO

• Stepan Nasada — Impact Manager

• Vicki McKenna — Editor

Looking for collaborators and partners

We are looking for specialised authors and for academic, media and funding partners who can help us build the encyclopedia. Write to mucka@atlasoftodaysworld.org, or apply as a volunteer editor.

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Where the data comes from

Country borders and names come from Natural Earth. The data layers are imported in bulk from Our World in Data and refreshed with a single command, so a yearly update takes minutes rather than manual editing:

Editorial content

Region portraits, country profiles and news are written by the Atlas team in the Atlas’s own editorial system, where every change goes through review before it is published.

Editorial standards and corrections

Every article names its author and shows when it was published and last updated. Facts link to their sources, and every number comes with the year and the institution that measured it. Each change is reviewed by an editor before it is published. If you find a mistake, write to mucka@atlasoftodaysworld.org: we correct errors openly and update the article’s date.

How to cite the Atlas

Atlas of Today’s World, “page title”, page URL (date of access). Data layers can also be cited with their original source, which every page names.

For researchers, search engines and AI tools

The Atlas is open to search engines and AI assistants. A Markdown overview for language models is at /llms.txt (full text at /llms-full.txt), every article has a Markdown version (add .md to its address), and new articles appear in our RSS and Atom feeds.