This page provides a free printable paper globe template collection — twelve different polyhedral designs you can download as a PDF, print, cut, and fold into a three-dimensional globe of the Earth. Each template is built from real topographic data, so the resulting globe is geographically accurate. The collection makes an excellent hands-on activity for geography classrooms, GIS Day events (held each year on 14 November), and anyone interested in cartography or paper craft.

How a folding paper globe works

A folding paper globe is a printed net — a flat arrangement of polygonal faces that, when cut out and folded along the marked lines, assembles into a closed polyhedron whose faces display a world map. Because a sphere cannot be unrolled onto a flat sheet without distortion, the map is projected onto the faces of the chosen polyhedron using a polyhedral map projection. Each face carries a portion of the map with relatively low distortion; the distortion is concentrated at the fold edges rather than spread across the entire surface as it would be in a conventional flat map projection such as Mercator.

The earliest known polyhedral globe projection dates to around 1514, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci or his associates, who used an octant (eight-faced) arrangement. Christian Gottlieb Reichard produced a cube-based polyhedral globe in 1803, and an icosahedral globe appeared in 1851. The approach was revived and popularised in the twentieth century — most famously by Buckminster Fuller, whose 1943 Dymaxion projection unfolded the world onto an icosahedron with notably low angular and area distortion.

Polyhedra in this paper globe template collection

The twelve designs in this collection use polyhedra with different numbers of faces. More faces produce a rounder globe and lower distortion per face, but also make assembly more fiddly. The five Platonic solids — the only convex polyhedra whose faces are all identical regular polygons — are all represented:

• Tetrahedron — 4 equilateral triangular faces. The simplest possible closed polyhedron; the resulting globe is very angular.
• Cube (hexahedron) — 6 square faces. One of the oldest polyhedral globe designs, used by Reichard in 1803.
• Octahedron — 8 equilateral triangular faces. Produces a noticeably rounder result than the cube.
• Dodecahedron — 12 regular pentagonal faces. Provides broad, readable map panels and a good approximation of a sphere.
• Icosahedron — 20 equilateral triangular faces. The Platonic solid that most closely approximates a sphere; the basis of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion projection.

The collection also includes several Archimedean solids and related polyhedra with higher face counts:

• 14 faces — a cuboctahedron or similar semi-regular solid.
• 24 faces — a tetrakis cube or similar form, giving a smoother sphere approximation.
• 26 faces — a rhombicuboctahedron or similar form combining square and triangular faces.
• 32 faces (soccer ball / truncated icosahedron) — 12 regular pentagons and 20 regular hexagons. This is the geometry of the classic black-and-white football (soccer ball) pattern, popularised globally after the Adidas Telstar at the 1970 FIFA World Cup. It is also the geometry of the carbon-60 molecule (buckminsterfullerene). With 32 faces it produces one of the roundest and most accurate paper globes in the collection.
• Geodesic — a geodesic sphere approximation, subdividing the icosahedron faces into smaller triangles. Geodesic designs can have many more faces, further reducing per-face distortion.
• Folding sphere — a curved-crease folding design that collapses flat for storage and springs open into a near-spherical form.

How to use the paper globe template PDF

1. Download the PDF using the link below the gallery.
2. Print on A3 paper for the best result. A4 works but produces a smaller globe that is harder to assemble.
3. Cut carefully along the outer edges of the net.
4. Score and fold along every marked fold line. Using a ruler and a blunt stylus or the back of a knife to score the lines first produces clean, sharp folds.
5. Glue the tabs in the sequence shown on the template, working from one side of the net to the other to avoid trapping your hand inside.

Printing on heavier paper stock (120–160 gsm) gives a more rigid finished globe and makes folding easier.

Download the printable foldable paper globe template

Why polyhedral globes are useful for GIS education

Building a paper globe by hand makes abstract cartographic concepts tangible. Assembling the net demonstrates directly why all flat maps distort the Earth: the faces of the polyhedron fit together perfectly in three dimensions but cannot lie flat without gaps or overlaps. Comparing the same world map printed on a tetrahedron (4 faces, high per-face distortion) versus an icosahedron (20 faces, low per-face distortion) gives an immediate visual sense of how more subdivisions reduce projection error — the same principle underlying modern geodesic and hierarchical spatial indexing systems such as H3 and S2.

Paper globes are a popular activity for GIS Day, the annual celebration of geographic information systems held on the Wednesday of Geography Awareness Week each November. They are also used in school geography and mathematics curricula to introduce polyhedra, map projections, and the geometry of the sphere.