The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides the public with free downloads of U.S. nautical charts, covering coastal areas and the Great Lakes. NOAA charts are updated periodically and include Notice to Mariners corrections.
NOAA Electronic and Printable Chart Formats
NOAA’s electronic navigational chart (NOAA ENC®) is the most common format for navigational charts. The ENC product format is specified by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO).
The NOAA custom chart (NCC) application enables users to create their own customized nautical charts directly from the latest official ENC data. ENC products can also be displayed by third party electronic charting software and marine electronic devices such as chartplotters.
Obsolete Chart Products
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is undertaking a multi-year program to end production and maintenance of its suite of over 1,000 traditional paper nautical charts and all associated raster chart products and services, including:
- Print-on-demand (POD) paper nautical charts
- Full-size chart PDFs
- NOAA raster navigational charts (NOAA RNC®)
- BookletChart™ PDFs
- NOAA RNC tile service
- Online RNC viewer
NOAA expects the cancellation of these products and services to be completed by January 2025. For more information and to download free NOAA charts, visit www.nauticalcharts.gov/.
Previous editions of NOAA charts, including the “Last-Edition” of each paper nautical chart, may be downloaded for free from the NOAA Historical Map and Chart Collection.