Trailroll

How to make a map of the countries you've visited

Updated November 10, 2026 · 4 min read

"How many countries have you been to?" is harder to answer than it sounds. Trips blur together, and transit stops, day trips and childhood holidays are easy to forget. A map makes the answer visible, and your photos can fill most of it in for you.

Three ways to map the countries you've been to

  • A scratch-off poster. Satisfying on a wall, but it only knows what you remember to scratch, and it can't show where in each country you went.
  • A click-to-colour website. Free tools let you tick countries on a list and colour a world map. Quick, but it's still a memory exercise, and it shows nothing about the trips themselves.
  • A map built from your photos. Your photos store where they were taken, so a photo map shows every country you photographed, plus the cities, the route and the dates.

Build it from your photos with Trailroll

  1. 1Pick a few photos from every trip you can find: phone backups, Google Photos, old camera folders.
  2. 2Upload them to Trailroll. Each photo is pinned where it was taken, and trips are named after the countries they cover.
  3. 3Scroll through the trip list year by year. Gaps jump out: a trip with no photos is a trip you need to look for.
  4. 4Share the map with a link. The shared page shows how many trips and countries it covers.
Put all your trips on one mapUpload your photos and Trailroll pins each one where it was taken. Free for your first 500 photos.
Make my travel map

What counts as a country?

There's no single rule, so pick one and stick to it. Common choices:

  • UN members: 193 countries. The most widely used list.
  • Including territories: places like Greenland, Hong Kong or Puerto Rico are counted separately by many travellers.
  • Did it count if you only changed planes? Most people say no: you need to leave the airport.

Questions

What if my old photos have no location?
Photos from old cameras often have no GPS. Trailroll suggests a place based on your other photos from the same days, or you can pin them on the map yourself.

Related guides