Open-source tool puts Norrköping on the map

17 March 2026

Thor Balkhed

The open-source mapping software QGIS has released a new major version; Desktop 4.0 Norrköping. It was launched in March 2026 after the international QGIS community gathered in the city last year.

Norrk枚ping city center from the air. — Norrköping鈥攁 physical city, a digital twin, and now also a map software.

Visualisering av datalager i QGIS ovanp氓 en tecknad landyta — QGIS can display various facts about a surface on Earth.

QGIS is a geographic information system used for working with maps and spatial data. The software is worldwide to collect, analyze, process, and visualize information linked to locations on Earth. With QGIS, users can combine different map layers鈥攕uch as satellite imagery, property boundaries, roads, and elevation data鈥攖o analyze everything from urban planning and environmental changes to traffic flows or flood risks.
The program is free and based on open-source code, and is used professionally by government agencies, researchers, companies, and journalists. QGIS is opened globally around 20 million times each month, and the number of users has steadily increased in recent years.
In June 2025, the international QGIS User Conference was held in Norrk枚ping, where around 300 participants from 37 countries gathered for presentations, workshops, and discussions about the future of GIS technology. A tradition is that the host city of such a developer meeting lends its name to an upcoming version

Stort bord med 3D-modell av Norrk枚ping. — Visual City. Visitors control which 鈥渓ayer鈥� they want to view.

鈥� and that version was released in March 2026.
At Link枚ping University, GIS and geodata are used in several research fields. Researchers such as Andreas Kerren, Kostiantyn Kucher, and Katerina Vrotsou work on methods for analyzing and visualizing complex data, where map information often plays a central role.
Researcher Erik Telld茅n has also worked on projects where geodata is linked to digital urban environments. One such project is Norrk枚ping鈥檚 digital twin Visual City, a three-dimensional model where urban data can be projected and analyzed. This type of visualization often relies on geodata that is first processed in GIS tools like QGIS.
The fact that the new version of the software bears the name Norrk枚ping connects LiU鈥檚 research in visualization and geodata with one of the world鈥檚 most widely used open tools for map analysis.
QGIS 4.0 Norrk枚ping primarily represents a technical modernization of the software and is built on an updated graphics component platform. This provides better performance and makes it easier to develop new features in the future. This version also includes several improvements related to the handling of so-called point clouds.
A schematic illustration of how QGIS can display various facts about a surface on Earth.

Visual City at Visualization Center. — 鈥淰isual City鈥� at the Visualization Center in Norrk枚ping, where large amounts of data about the city are visualized using ceiling projectors onto a physical model of the city鈥攆or example, what areas would flood at different water levels, how the sun moves on different days of the year, or how noise varies across days. Photo: Thor Balkhed

Information Visualization

The group focuses on the explorative analysis and visualization of typically large and complex information spaces. We develop novel interactive visualization methods and tools that are able to efficiently support analysts from various domains.

Immersive Visualization

The Immersive Visualization Unit researches and develops various techniques to create an immersive and captivating visualization of data using large-scale display systems, such as immersive domes and stereoscopic vision (3D).

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