Shape maps have finally been incorporated into Power BI

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Shape maps have finally been incorporated into Power BI
After many years in the preview wilderness, Shape Maps have finally been incorporated into Power BI. This blog explains how to use them!

Posted by Andy Brown on 22 June 2026

In this blog

Step 1 of 6 - Find the right spatial map file
Step 2 of 6 - Create the shape map
Step 3 of 6 - Upload the custom map
Step 4 of 6 - Check the map key
Step 5 of 6 - Create the correct key
Step 6 of 6 - Colour your shape map

Shape maps (sometimes called, wonderfully, choropleths) look like this:

A shape map showing sales by region.

This blog shows the steps you need to follow to create a shape map like this.

If you spend a lot of time in Power BI working with maps you may prefer to create reference layers in an Azure map visual instead.

Step 1 of 6 - Find the right spatial map file

This is probably the hardest step. Power BI requires you to upload a spatial map in either TopoJSON or GeoJSON format (TopoJSON is the simpler format, and probably the best one to aim for). These spatial maps contain details of all of the boundaries in the region you're interested in. A good thing to Google is something like this:

Download TopoJSON map UK regions

For this example I went to this excellent tool created by Ahmad Barclay based on the Open Geography portal from the Office for National Statistics:

I chose to download English regions, and clicked on the Download TopoJSON button.

This will give you a JSON file:

I've downloaded this twice now, hence the (1) subscript!

Here's what this looks like:

The start of the JSON file (it contains over 280,000 characters).

Step 2 of 6 - Create the shape map

You can now create a shape map in Power BI:

Click on the shape map visual.

Assign data fields to this 9although as we'll see you may later want to change these):

This would in theory show regions coloured according to how many sales there were in each, although there are good reasons not to take this approach (read on).

Your map won't look very prepossessing yet:

You haven't uploaded a spatial map, so guess which default Power BI uses?

Step 3 of 6 - Upload the custom map

The next thing to do is to click on your shape map, go to its formating properties and choose to upload a custom map:

Choose File Upload, then choose Custom map (scroll to the bottom of the list to find this).

Now choose to browse to the map you've downloaded:

Click on this button to find a map.

When you've chosen your downloaded shape map, you should see this:

The shape map name appears in the box.

Things are looking better!

Some regions are filled in; some aren't.

Step 4 of 6 - Check the map key

This is probably the easiest step to miss - you need to find out how Power BI is linking your data to the regions:

Click on this link to show the map type key.

For this case you'll see this dialog box:

Something must match to either the areacd or areanm columns.

Step 5 of 6 - Create the correct key

The easiest thing to do now is to create a DAX column giving either the correct region:

Here we've created a formula which corrects 3 region names: East Anglia, Yorkshire and Humberside and the North.

Or (probably better) create a calculated column which gives the region code:

The code is more likely to work correctly the first time, as codes are harder to misspell.

You can now change your shape map visual to show one of these new columns:

Here I'm showing the region code.

Things are now looking good!

The final shape map - well, almost.

Step 6 of 6 - Colour your shape map

The shape map's built in colour saturation isn't that flexible, so it's probably best to apply conditional formatting. First remove the Color saturation field:

Delete this column - your map will now be monochrome.

Now go to the conditional formatting button for the map colour:

Click on this button to make the location colours more variable.

Here I've set the colour to be a gradient fill based on the total of the Quantity column in the Sales table:

My gradient fill choice.

The final result won't necessarily look that different, but you'll have more control over it:

My final visual.

Sam says that the shape visual has been in preview for 10 years. I am curious why Microsoft - having waited so long - suddenly decided that the Summer of 2026 was when the shape visual should be allowed out of preview!

Some other pages relevant to this blog include:

You can also book hourly online consultancy for your time zone with one of our 7 expert trainers!

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