Key:admin_level
 admin_level
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| Description |
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Indicates the level of an administrative boundary  
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| Group: boundaries |
| Used on these elements |
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| Documented values: 1 |
| Useful combination |
| See also |
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| Status: de facto |
| Tools for this tag |
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The admin_level=* key describes the administrative level of a feature within a government hierarchy. It is primarily used for the borders of territorial political entities (e.g. country, state, municipality) together with boundary=administrative. Due to cultural and political differences, admin levels of different countries only correspond approximately to each other. For example, an admin_level=7 entity in one admin_level=4 (sub-national jurisdiction) of a country (admin_level=2) isn't exactly the same sort of entity as an admin_level=7 entity in another sub-national jurisdiction, even though they are in the same country. This is because laws (constitutions, legal traditions...) in each sub-national jurisdiction can and do differ from one other, even in the larger sphere of the national jurisdiction.
It is also used with other types of objects that are associated with government entities. For example, see Key:capital.
Rationale
admin_level=2 through admin_level=10 allow for different administrative subdivision schemes to be handled in a consistent way by data consumers. The use of a numbering scheme rather than words for the values helps avoid confusion due to different terminology used in different countries. One country may describe the highest sub-national division as a "state", and another a "province". By using admin_level=4 for both of these it is more clear.
Additionally, when used with boundary=administrative, admin_level=* allows for a standard rendering scheme between countries with different levels of hierarchies.
Data consumers should take care when interpreting values of this key. While admin_level=2 is almost always a de-facto independent country, and admin_level=4 is usually equivalent to a "province", higher values vary in meaning between countries. A data consumer looking for municipalities corresponding to "city", "town" or "village" boundaries will find these tagged anywhere from admin_level=4 (e.g. Berlin
Berlin) to admin_level=10 (e.g. Cheddar, UK Cheddar, UK).
See country-specific values for the appropriate numeric admin_level=* values.
Usage
admin_level=* is added to a relation or way which is also tagged with:
Or sometimes to a node or way which is also tagged with:
In addition to the direct usage of this tag with the keys above, the numeric values used by admin_level=* are also used for tags:
- capital=* – usually as
admin_centre of an admin_level=* tagged relation with the same number.
Country-specific values
To see how each level is used for each country, see the page on boundary=administrative and its sections:
- a long list of country specific admin_level values.
- a shorter list of countries which are using admin levels up to level 11.