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July 21, 2026 / by Olaf Bánki

Notification on Catalogue of Life Annual release

Publication of COL Annual release moved to December.

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June 20, 2026 / by Markus Döring

rcol: an R client for the Catalogue of Life

A new R package, rcol, brings Catalogue of Life name matching, taxon and dataset lookups, tree navigation and the ChecklistBank parsers straight into R — modelled on rgbif and taxadb.

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June 18, 2026 / by Olaf Bánki

A vision comes to Life

Catalogue of Life is the main taxonomic reference for GBIF

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May 29, 2026 / by Markus Döring

Distribution maps, gazetteers, and how to publish your own

The new taxon distribution map draws structured distributions and an optional GBIF occurrence overlay. Here is how the col-gazetteers project underpins it — and how to publish distributions that the map can actually draw.

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May 29, 2026 / by Markus Döring

Portal components v2: a major, breaking release

The col-browser ReactJS components have moved to React 19 and a fully controlled API. Pin to v1 to keep your pages working, or upgrade to the more flexible v2.

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May 18, 2026 / by Markus Döring

Catalogue of Life now on the iPhone

A free Catalogue of Life iPhone app is now available on the App Store — browse, search and explore the full COL checklist from your pocket.

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October 7, 2025 / by Olaf Banki & Camila Plata

A more comprehensive Catalogue of Life now Live!

Now extended with 17500 data sources

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July 9, 2025 / by Camila Plata & Olaf Bánki

Catalogue of Life 2025

The catalogue has grown by 2%, with 48,766 newly accepted species names added.

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July 4, 2025 / by Geoff Ower & Dmitry Mozzherin

Biodiversity Heritage Library's Call for Support & integration with COL

BHL is seeking new hosting partners

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March 27, 2025 / by Markus Döring

COL DOIs & ORCIDs

Adding COL releases as works to your ORCID profile

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