Press release Amsterdam International MAP FAir 
on 12 september 2026
 

The third Amsterdam Map Fair will be held at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam on 12 September  2026.
At this fair, National and international antique dealers will offer antique sea charts, maps, atlases, globes and prints.
The participating antique dealers come from :

 The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, , Italy, and  America.

Amsterdam Map Fair
Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Kattenburgerplein 1, 1018AA Amsterdam
Saturday, 12 September  2026
Opening hours: 10:00 - 17:00
Site: www.map-fair.com/amsterdam
Email: amsterdam@map-fair.com
Tel.: Willy Schmidt +31 (0)6 28950074
- 34 national and international dealers
- Free valuation of your atlases, maps and globes
- Lectures by well-known speakers.
- Visiting the fair is free. Visitors to the fair have free access to Het Scheepvaartmuseum during the fair hours. 
- Prior to the fair, there is a virtual exhibition of old prints of Amsterdam. (map-fair.com/amsterdam/expo)

It may come as a surprise that the fair will take place in a museum, but it is not surprising that the location is Het Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam. After all, Het Scheepvaartmuseum has one of the world's largest and most remarkable maritime collections, including sea charts, atlases and globes.

Map production started at the end of the 15th century in Italy and then in Antwerp. Dutch mapmakers such as Willem and Joan Blaeu, Henricus Hondius, Johannes Janssonius, Frederik de Wit, Nicolas Visscher and many others determined how people saw the world in the 17th century.
The fair also features more recent maps. Maps have influenced the course of world history.
Maps were used to settle a conflict, during a battle, for the construction of a road or canal, on an important shipping route and as a propaganda tool.

The Dutch publishers from the Golden Age sold their atlases, globes and maps worldwide at the time. Over the past 100 years, many atlases and maps have been bought by foreign traders and maps have disappeared from the Netherlands. 25 foreign traders will be present at this fair and Dutch collectors, museums and private individuals will have the opportunity to buy these products back and ultimately keep them for the Netherlands.

Program and Lectures of 2026

12:00 Martijn Storms (Curator of Maps and Atlases at Leiden University Libraries). In his lecture, *The Map Collection of Bodel Nijenhuis*, he discusses a number of auctions (of deceased collectors) where the Leiden collector Johannes Tiberius Bodel Nijenhuis (2797-1872) made his mark.

16:00 Paula van Gestel has been affiliated with the historical cartographic research program Explokart at the University of Amsterdam since 1991. In this lecture, a preliminary result of ongoing research into wall maps published in the Netherlands is presented. The criteria, composition, sources, interpretation thereof, and exclusions made are discussed. Sales and trade are also addressed, and the various publishers are placed in the context of their time.