GBIF launches new website consolidating developments around taxonomic backbone handling, event data exploration, improved search and download, web stack consistency and custom data dashboards
GBIF has launched a new version of the main GBIF.org website, introducing the Catalogue of Life as the default taxonomy for organizing occurrence data, user-customizable dashboards, improved presentation of sampling event data and full alignment with the technological stack powering the GBIF hosted portals programme. While adding new features and improved functionality, the overall site maintains a similar structure but with many adjustments intended to improve the user experience.
With the significant enhancements in sources and assembly process, the Catalogue of Life (COL) becomes the default taxonomic backbone GBIF, against which occurrences are organized. Users will benefit from a professionally maintained global taxonomy with monthly updates and integration of recently described organisms. COL also enables a more nuanced taxonomy, breaking the boundaries of principal Linnean ranking.
Since the final quarter of 2025, users have been able to explore GBIF-mediated species occurrences organized by COL and the former taxonomic backbone in parallel. To help users in the transition, the previous GBIF website with occurrences organized to the old backbone will remain temporarily available at https://old.gbif.org following the launch of the new site.
Improved exploration of event-base
The Humboldt extension widened the scope of sampling-event datasets, enabling the indexing and searching of elements critical to ecological inventories. The new GBIF.org improves the findability and usability of sampling-event datasets by adding cataloging functionality, allowing users to identify datasets containing specific extensions, such as the Humboldt extension or Relevé.
Data dashboards
The new GBIF.org offers the ability to curate customized dashboards (example) for any subset of occurrence data, allowing for highly flexible and dynamic reporting across numerous facets.
Feedback
Provide feedback on the website through the integrated feedback system (accessed via the rectangular speech bubble in top right corner), via Github or by email to helpdesk@gbif.org.