How to Make a Map in Minecraft

A map is one of the first useful things you can craft, and it is easy to get slightly wrong. Bedrock players craft one, walk around, and find no arrow showing where they are. Java players zoom out, and find their base pressed into a corner. This guide gives the recipe for both editions, read from the games' own recipe files, then everything you can do with a map afterwards: make it bigger, copy it, lock it, hang it on a wall. It ends with the explorer maps that changed in the Wilderness Bound update. Everything here is checked against Java 26.3 and Bedrock 1.26.51.

What Do You Need to Make a Map?

You need 8 Paper and 1 Compass, plus a crafting table. That is 9 Sugar Cane for the paper (every 3 Sugar Cane make 3 Paper, so you get 9 Paper with 1 to spare) and 4 Iron Ingots and 1 Redstone Dust for the compass. Sugar cane grows on the edge of water almost everywhere, and you can replant it. Iron and redstone both come from an early mining trip.

Step	Ingredients	Makes
1. Paper	3 × Sugar Cane in a row	3 × Paper
2. Compass	4 × Iron Ingot around 1 × Redstone Dust	1 × Compass
3. Map	8 × Paper around 1 × Compass	1 × Empty Map

3

To start the map, hold it and use it (right-click on PC, the use button on console and phone). It turns into a map and starts drawing the land around you as you walk. It only fills in while you hold it, so keep it in your hand on the walk if you want the full square drawn.

Is the Map Recipe Different in Java and Bedrock?

Yes. Java has one map recipe. Bedrock has two kinds of empty map, and several ways to make them. In Java every map shows your position. Bedrock splits it: a map made from paper alone shows the land but no player marker, and a map made with a compass, called a locator map, shows the marker. If you are on Bedrock and your map has no arrow, this is why, and you don't have to start over: add a Compass to the map you already have and it becomes a locator map that keeps everything it has drawn.

What you put in	Where	Java 26.3	Bedrock 1.26.51
8 Paper around 1 Compass	Crafting table	Empty Map (shows you)	Empty Locator Map (shows you)
9 Paper	Crafting table	Nothing	Empty Map (no marker)
1 Paper	Cartography Table	Nothing	Empty Map (no marker)
1 Paper + 1 Compass	Cartography Table	Nothing	Empty Locator Map
1 Empty Map + 1 Compass	Crafting table or Cartography Table	Nothing	Empty Locator Map (adds the marker)
A map you have drawn + 1 Compass	Crafting table, Cartography Table or Anvil	Nothing (Java maps already show you)	The same map with your marker; it keeps its drawing and zoom

Bedrock tip: one paper is enough

On Bedrock, a cartography table turns a single Paper into an Empty Map, and 1 Paper + 1 Compass into an Empty Locator Map. That is up to 9 times cheaper than the crafting table. If you plan to make a wall of maps, build the cartography table first.

How Do You Make a Bigger Map in Minecraft?

Put your map and 1 Paper into a cartography table. Each paper zooms the map out one level, and level 4 is the largest. A new map starts at level 0, covering 128 × 128 blocks with one pixel per block. Every level doubles the width and height, so the same 128 × 128 pixels cover four times the area, in less detail.

• A crafting table can zoom a map too: put the map in the middle and 8 Paper around it. It does the same thing as the cartography table, for 8 times the paper. Use the cartography table.
• A locked map can't grow. Lock a map only once it is the size you want.
• Zooming starts the map over. The bigger map comes out blank and fills in again as you walk with it. It is also coarser: small details like a path or a single house can disappear at level 3 and 4.
• There is no way to zoom back in. Copy the map before you zoom it if you want to keep the small, detailed one.

What Does a Cartography Table Do?

A cartography table is the map workbench: it zooms, copies and locks maps, more cheaply than a crafting table. You craft it from 2 Paper on top of 4 planks of any wood. It is also the job block of the Cartographer villager, so placing one next to an unemployed villager gives you a map trader.

Put in	You get	Java	Bedrock
Map + 1 Paper	The map, one zoom level larger (blank again)	✅	✅
Map + 1 Empty Map	2 identical maps	✅	✅
Map + 1 Glass Pane	A locked map that never changes	✅	✅
1 Paper	An Empty Map	—	✅
1 Paper + 1 Compass	An Empty Locator Map	—	✅
Map + 1 Compass	The same map, now showing where you are	—	✅
Any map, then type a name	A renamed map, free	— (use an anvil)	✅

The glass pane has to be a plain Glass Pane. Stained glass panes don't work.

How Do You Copy, Lock and Frame a Map?

Copy it with an Empty Map at a cartography table, or in a crafting grid. The crafting grid takes one drawn map plus up to 8 Empty Maps and gives you the original back plus one copy per Empty Map. That is 9 identical maps from one craft, handy for giving every player on a server the same base map. Copies stay linked: when one is updated, they all are.

Lock it with a Glass Pane at a cartography table when the picture is finished. A locked map keeps its picture even if the land changes, which is what you want for map art or for a "before" picture of your build. It can still be copied, but not zoomed.

Frame it by placing an Item Frame on a wall and using the map on it. A framed map fills the whole frame, and the parts you haven't explored are see-through. Put several frames side by side with maps of neighbouring areas and they join up into one big picture. That is a map wall.

• Item Frame: 8 Sticks around 1 Leather. One per map on the wall.
• Glow Item Frame: an Item Frame plus a Glow Ink Sac. It keeps the map bright in a dark room.

Java only: put your base on the map

In Java, use a map on a placed banner and the map gets a marker in the banner's colour at that spot. Rename the banner at an anvil first and the marker shows its name. It is the easiest way to mark your base, your Nether portal and your villager hall on one map. Bedrock maps have no banner markers.

Why Is My Map Off-Centre?

Because maps don't centre on you. The world is split into a fixed grid of map squares, and a new map draws the square you are standing in, wherever you are inside it. Zooming out swaps in the next bigger square of the grid, which is why your base can end up near an edge. The square that holds the world's 0,0 point has these edges:

Every other square lines up with these, at the same size. So maps made in neighbouring squares at the same zoom level always tile perfectly on a map wall. To get your base in the middle of a big map, build it near the middle of a square: for a level 3 map around 0,0 that is about X 448, Z 448.

Where Do Explorer Maps Come From in 26.3?

Explorer maps are maps you cannot craft. Each one is already drawn with a marker on one structure, and you buy it from a Cartographer or find it in a chest. The Wilderness Bound update (Java 26.3, Bedrock 26.50) added five new ones in both editions: a camp map, and four maps that only an abandoned camp's secret chest gives you. In Java 26.3 every kind of explorer map is also its own item now. The names below are Java's.

Map	Leads to	Where to get it
Plains Village Map · Desert Village Map · Savanna Village Map · Snowy Village Map · Taiga Village Map	The nearest village of that type	Apprentice Cartographer: 8 emeralds + a compass
Jungle Pyramid Map	Jungle Pyramid	Apprentice cartographer: 8 emeralds + a compass; abandoned camp secret chest
Swamp Hut Map	Swamp Hut	Apprentice cartographer: 8 emeralds + a compass
Buried Trial Chambers Map	Trial Chambers	Journeyman cartographer: 12 emeralds + a compass; abandoned camp secret chest
Ocean Monument Map	Ocean Monument	Journeyman cartographer: 13 emeralds + a compass
Woodland Mansion Map	Woodland Mansion	Master cartographer: 14 emeralds + a compass; abandoned camp secret chest
Abandoned Camp Map (new; in game it is named after a biome, like Dappled Forest Camp Map)	Abandoned Camp (in a different biome)	An abandoned camp's common chest
Buried Ancient City Map (new)	Ancient City	Only an abandoned camp's secret chest
Buried Mineshaft Map (new)	Mineshaft	Only an abandoned camp's secret chest
Desert Pyramid Map (new)	Desert Pyramid	Only an abandoned camp's secret chest
Warm Ocean Ruins Map (new)	Ocean Ruin (warm)	Only an abandoned camp's secret chest
Buried Treasure Map	Buried Treasure	Shipwreck map chests and Ocean Ruin chests

• Cartographer prices are the same in Java and Bedrock. A Novice cartographer also sells a plain Empty Map for 7 emeralds.
• A cartographer's village decides which village and temple maps it can offer, in both editions. A plains cartographer, for example, can offer the Savanna and Taiga Village Maps but not the Plains one. To get a particular map, find a cartographer from a different village type.
• The camp maps are the same in both editions. The secret chest picks one of the same seven maps in Java and Bedrock, and a camp map never leads to a camp in the biome you found it in.
• Copy an explorer map before a long trip (Empty Map + the explorer map at a cartography table), so a lost map isn't a lost structure.

Want the camp itself? Our dappled forest guide covers where camps generate and which ones hide the secret chest. For the full cartographer trade list, see the villager trades guide.

New to it? How to use a seed map walks you through it in five minutes.