Download

Current, monthly and annual versions of the Catalogue of Life

Amanita muscaria (L.) Lam. - Photo CC BY Олеся

Download the full latest release of the Catalogue of Life updated monthly or scroll down to download our past releases.

  • Base Release
  • Version 2025-11-12
  • The COL Base Release prioritises accuracy and only includes scrutinized, global sources. It excludes all information marked up with the XR icon.
  • 5366797 Names
  • 2238246 Species
  • 165 Sources
  • ColDP - Darwin Core Archive - TextTree
  • Download

Not sure which format to choose? Check out the ChecklistBank’s information on the available formats. For versions from previous months, please visit COL’s archive. ChecklistBank also offers partial downloads if you are only interested in a certain group of the checklist. Please note that this requires a free GBIF user account.

Looking for just a part of the Catalogue of Life?

You can easily download data for a specific taxon or taxonomic group, such as an order, family, or any other rank.

On each taxon’s page, click the download icon, next to the taxon identifier or at the bottom of the page. This option redirects you to a pre-filled download form the Catalogue of Life’s infrastructure, ChecklistBank.

Example for Myriapoda

Dowload Myriapoda

You can also customise your download directly in ChecklistBank by following these steps:

  1. Log in to ChecklistBank using your GBIF account. Don’t have one? You can register at gbif.org.
  2. In the left menu, go to Datasets and click on the blue button “COL Releases”.
  3. A list of the available releases will be displayed. It begins with the most recent, choose the one you prefer.
  4. In the left menu, click Download.
  5. Refine your download with the advanced filters:
    • Taxon of your interest
    • Archive format
    • Fields to include
    • Minimum rank for search: Family, Genus, or Species
    • Exclude ranks below a selected level
    • Exclude synonyms
    • Extinct only

Please read the information on the available data formats if you are unclear which one to use.

Past Releases

We archive all our releases which can be downloaded from our annual or monthly archive. Annual versions of the catalogue have been published since 2000.

Since 2021 the annual versions remain permanently accessible via ChecklistBank and it’s API, while we only keep monthly versions in ChecklistBank for a year.

For quick access we list here all available downloads of the annual versions of the Catalogue. For releases before 2012 only MySQL dump files are available.