What's coming to Google Earth in 2026

For over two decades, Google Earth has been a window to our world. It’s where millions go to scale the peaks of the Himalayas, zoom in on the streets of their childhood neighborhoods, and explore the planet from above.

But exploring the world isn’t enough anymore. Today’s global challenges demand action. In 2025, we doubled down on making Google Earth an advanced geospatial platform for professionals by launching new functionality that laid the groundwork to becoming the source of truth for critical geospatial decisions.

In 2026, we are hitting the accelerator

Our mission is clear: to empower engineers, urban planners, sustainability leaders, and other professionals to transform their businesses, their cities, and the planet. To make that happen, we are focusing on three core shifts: enriching our iconic imagery with professional-grade data, making Earth into a canvas for your geospatial storytelling, and accelerating your workflows with AI.

Here is how we are building that future.

Iconic imagery meets professional-grade data

The foundation of Google Earth has always been its industry-leading digital model of the real world. Imagery is the tide that raises all boats, and we have heard you loud and clear: having the freshest, highest-quality imagery is absolutely critical for your work. That is why we are bringing exciting improvements to Google Earth imagery throughout the year.

In 2026, we are supercharging this canvas by bridging the gap between iconic visual exploration and deep, professional-grade intelligence. We know that for professionals, data accuracy and freshness are non-negotiable. To deliver on that promise, we are integrating breakthroughs from across Google — including Earth Engine, Google DeepMind, and Google Research — directly into the Google Earth experience.

To help you keep track of everything coming to Google Earth, we recently launched a new “What’s New” feature within the product so you never miss a feature release. And we are already off to a fast start this year: the data catalog continues to expand with powerful new layers and broader global coverage. Most notably, 20- and 40-meter elevation contours are now available globally, giving you instant access to the topographic context you need for site planning anywhere on the planet.

Personalize, collaborate, and move faster, together

The true power of insights is their ability to drive collective understanding and inspire action. But for too long, geospatial work has lost momentum during handoff miscommunication, stale materials, or technical misalignment.

In 2026, we are revolutionizing geospatial visualization again by empowering you to see more of your data on Google Earth. We know the real magic happens when your private intelligence meets our global digital twin, so we are heavily investing in frictionless data import and collaboration features. We have already launched major enhancements for importing KML, KMZ, and GeoJSON files as features or custom data layers — and even more format support is on the way.

But Google Earth is more than just a repository; it has always been a fundamental tool for geospatial storytelling. By uniting data, imagery, and stakeholders, we are ensuring everyone is aligned on a single source of truth. This brings complex geospatial data to life, allowing your entire team to move forward with confidence and getting you from “Question” to “Answer” faster than ever before.

Save time and work smarter with Google AI

We are entering the era of agentic geospatial intelligence. Today, you can already use Ask Google Earth to instantly search through Google’s massive catalog of satellite and Street View imagery with natural language. Finding and plotting things like a new site location or infrastructure data is just the tip of the iceberg.

In today’s fast-paced environment, you shouldn’t have to spend weeks gathering, cleaning, and preparing data when you could be executing your strategy. We are making it possible to turn natural language into professional-grade insights in seconds. By letting AI handle the heavy lifting of data wrangling and manual analysis, your team will be free to focus on the interpretation, strategy, and creative problem-solving that actually move your projects forward.

With more data, more specialized tools, and Google’s ongoing commitment to Earth AI and advanced geospatial reasoning, the future of Gemini capabilities within Google Earth is incredibly exciting. We are building towards a workspace where AI doesn’t just retrieve information, but actively helps you anticipate global changes and design smarter outcomes.

A new way to work #onEarth

As we move through 2026, we invite you to join us on this journey. Whether you are a built-environment professional looking for a faster way to validate ground truth, or a public sector leader managing city-wide infrastructure, our new professional plans are designed to help you do your best work.

There is only one Earth. In 2026, let’s put it to work.