And again in lessons in bad mapmaking, don't you love pondering maps that aren't normalized for potentially more dominant trends?

https://www.thechurchnews.com/members/2026/08/27/church-membership-growth-by-united-states-2000-2025-jesus-christ-latter-day-saints/

I recently updated this a lot as you can probably tell. You will have to zoom in to see every detail like the Greenlandic villages for example

My boss asked me to put a map showing actual/de facto territorial control in his office, and I want to make sure the map I've found is accurate before using it.

I'm specifically looking for a map showing who actually controls territory on the ground, rather than:

internationally recognized/de jure borders
territorial claims
disputed territory being colored according to who claims it
territory legally belonging to a country but actually controlled by another group

Could people familiar with this subject look over the attached map and point out any inaccuracies or outdated areas?

I'm particularly interested in whether the colored areas accurately represent actual control, including areas controlled by de facto authorities or non-state groups.

If you identify an error, I'd appreciate it if you could tell me what its actually supposed to be, so that i can send it to our editor to change it.

The map is from Wikipedia and says its supposed to be from 9th of April 2025. But i would appreciate it if you could tell me what our editor needs to change, to make it up to date.

Thanks!

Updated (v3) version of this project I've been working on the last weeks! It is designed to provide context for the various coalitions and factions involved in the ongoing conflicts across Africa and the Middle East. Tensions have continued to rise in recent months, raising concerns that all of this could escalate into a wider regional war.

I was going to add more stuff like city labels, highways, railways, ports, more detailed gas, mining and oil infrastructure, pipelines, etc, etc, If it wasn't because my PC just couldn't handle the project anymore.

DISCLAIMER: Because a lot of people said commented this on the last version of the map i uploaded, if two countries are in the same "block" doesn't mean they automatically are best friends and have military relations, at least not yet, specially since most of this alliances are very recent and even former rivals like Egypt and Turkey have come together and shifted their relations at an unprecedented level in a short period of time.

Anyway, here's a more detailed description of the map:

🟥 Red | "Berbera Axis" / "Hexagon Alliance" & allies/proxies: Led by the UAE, Israel, and Ethiopia. They actively support Somalia's independent/breakaway regions, benefiting from the trade of local ports mainly managed by the Emirati firm DP World. In Sudan, this axis (Ethiopia and the UAE, Israel just doesn't care for now) heavily backs the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in their civil war against the Sudanese central government (SAF).

🟩 Green | "Mogadishu Axis" & allies: Led by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Egypt. They actively support the central Somali federal government against separatist regions and are rapidly arming Mogadishu - which recently demonstrated its military capabilities when the South West State of Somalia defied federal authority. They also support SAF in the Sudanese civil war.

🟨 Yellow | "Resistance Axis" & allies: Led by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its regional proxies against the western influence in the region and regional enemies specially Israel.

🟦 Deep blue | American (USA) sphere of Influence: Military outposts, and cooperative counter-terrorism partnerships with governments in the region.

🟦 Light blue | "Western" (mostly European) sphere of Influence: States "aligned with the west" politically and in security.

🟪 Purple | Russian sphere of Influence: Nations with a heavy dependency on the Africa Corps (Former Wagner Group) used for training, active combat or securing key infrastructure of allied states. Worth mentioning than since the dead of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the integration of the Wagner Group into the Russian ministry of defense, some former Wagner Group soldiers (specially in the CAR) have reorganized into dissidences, the most prominent one being Prigozhin's son (Pavel Prigozhin) Cartel-like structure that has control over local mining zones, human trafficking, key trade routes and recently has ventured into Tramadol trafficking specially into the neighboring active combat zones.

🟧 Orange | Chinese sphere of Influence: China has growing economic relationships with most of the African countries, and their SOE's have a lot of natural resources and infrastructure contracts all over the continent, but because i didn't have enough time to do the necessary research i just limited the presence of China here strictly in the form of Chinese PMS's protecting their state owned enterprises mining infrastructure within the Kivu region of the DRC. Omitting for example the Simandou mine in Guinea

⬛ Black: Islamic State and its regional affiliates.

⬜ White: Al-Qaeda and its regional affiliates.

🌐 Cyan: United Nations peacekeeping missions.

International Stabilization missions:

United Nations Missions (~44,000 total personnel)

• UNISFA in the disputed Abyei region (Sudan/South Sudan border).
• UNMISS in South Sudan.
• MINUSCA in the Central African Republic (actively supporting the state government).
• MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• UNFICYP in Cyprus

African Union Missions (~13,000+ total personnel)

• AUSSOM in Somalia (succeeding ATMIS)
• MNJTF in the Lake Chad Basin with Chad, Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon.

Special notes:

About Libya: Following the collapse of Khalifa Haftar’s 2019 offensive against Tripoli, the Libyan civil war froze into a stalemate, leaving the country split between the UN-recognized government in the West and Haftar’s forces in the East. Egypt historically backed Eastern Libya as a national security buffer zone to protect its own borders, specially to contain their once then rival Turkey influence over the Tripoli government. But this didn't stop UAE to emerge as the primary supporter of Haftar, recently advancing the political ascent of Khalifa’s son Saddam Haftar, and brokering oil and a power-sharing deal with the Tripoli government, going as far as letting the UAE backed RSF operate training camps inside it's territory and facilitate logistics to them, though they officially deny it. Also Turkey has entered the scene in the last month starting supporting Haftar while still being the main backer of the Tripoli government, to counter the UAE influence and if a peace deal is made, they would have significant influence over both sides.

About Morocco is highlighted as part of the Hexagon Alliance, even though it does not actively provide weapons or military equipment to any of the proxy conflicts (yet) because while Rabat publicly opposes support for breakaway regions, largely because of its own dispute with the Western Sahara, it remains a close strategic partner of the UAE and, more recently, Israel. Meanwhile, Algeria has firmly aligned itself with the "Mogadishu Axis". Given these regional alignments and the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," I believe Morocco should be considered part of the Hexagon Alliance.

About Greece and Cyprus: Similar to Morocco, not only were they directly proposed by Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu as part of the "Hexagon alliance" key allies of the UAE and Israel while having a common enemy, Turkey, worth mentioning their close relationship with Israel specially under Greek's conservative prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the planned Great Sea interconnector proposed in March 2021 and the EastMed pipeline proposed in January of 2020 to connect the three countries, though both stalled because of the pandemic and the consequent economic crisis and the heavy Turkish pressure against the projects even going as far as sending their navy to intercept research ships.

About India: The reasoning is similar. They were directly proposed by Big Yahu as part of the Hexagon alliance, Although it maintains extensive economic ties with Saudi Arabia and has military cooperation with Egypt, it leans much more strongly toward Israel and the UAE. Having military ties with Israel. And especially, given that Pakistan, India's swore enemy, is a key and close ally of Saudi Arabia, even having more than a thousand troops and a lot of equipment on Arabian territory, and even providing equipment and funds to proxies like the SAF and doing deals with Mogadishu, and most importantly, one of the founding members of the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement alongside Saudi Arabia and Turkey the 7th of August

About South Sudan: The ruling party of South Sudan after their independence in 2011 split because of corruption allegations, political and ethnic rivalries, With the SPLM-IO being founded in 2013 and starting a civil war that lasted until 2018, since 2015 the SPLM-IO started being supported by the South Sudanese government as an attempt to destabilize their young neighbor, after the peace deal and government coalition between the SPLM and SPLM-IO collapsed the conflict reactivated in March of 2025, with the SAF government again backing and supplying the SPLM-IO, as a consequence, the RSF started doing incursions and attacking the SPLM-IO in retaliation for their alliance, and while the official SPLM South Sudanese government is neutral in the Sudanese conflict, specially because alligning with any side would mean any could sabotage the oil pipeline that goes trough Sudan and that's the backbone of 90% of South Sudan's economy. However, they are naturally aligned with the RSF, and haven't opposed RSF occupying the disputed zones of Abyei and Kafia Kingi, and it even seems to have allowed the RSF to go trough their territory to start the Blue Nile campaign.

Even though i tried to do a deep research, this map is not intended to be 100% accurate given that conflicts in this region of the world are usually poorly documented and usually not very reliable. Also given that this is a highly volatile landscape, these proxy networks and alliances could shift in the coming months or even weeks. Any feedback or insights are highly appreciated! :)

https://environmentamerica.org/pennsylvania/resources/the-state-of-renewable-energy-dashboard/

Source

This thread is for general MapPorn discussion. Exchange ideas, ask for maps, talk about cartography, etc. Have a thought that doesn't fit in another thread, post it here.

An interactive map of the world's major river systems and the ancient cities that grew up alongside them:

https://rnrand.github.io/river-civs/

(Mostly AI with a few manual additions by me.)