Global events database

The input is the GDELT Project's article stream, which lists newly published online news every 15 minutes^[1]. GDELT Cloud reads that stream every hour, codes its own Events from the articles, groups the reporting into Stories and links people, organizations and places to Entity records^[2].

Every Event is coded in one of two families. CAMEO+ extends the CAMEO political event codes to further domains such as the economy, infrastructure and health. The conflict family follows the event types of ACLED's published codebook. Both vocabularies, with a definition for every code, are on the event taxonomy page and in the code reference.

A record carries its category and code, the actors on each side, a location down to a named place with coordinates and their precision, the event date and the evidence for it, fatalities where reported, ranking metrics, and links to its Stories and source articles. Fields with no evidence are null, never a guessed zero.

Coding is continuous from 1 March 2026 and grows every day. Backfill of earlier periods is planned. Every response states the dates it served in meta.coverage: the sample below reports served_dates of 2026-11-11 and window_complete: true^[3].

11 November 2026, by continent

The most active countries that day were United States (363), India (208), Turkey (179), Nigeria (121), Russia (112), Brazil (111), China (107) and Spain (99). Counts come from GET /api/v2/events/summary, grouped by continent and by country^[3].

The main ingest runs every hour, and publication to the API targets availability within 60 minutes of intake^[2]. The sample record below was first seen at 02:00 UTC and coded at 03:07 UTC on 11 November 2026.

A day keeps growing as later reporting arrives, so recent dates can be marked partial in meta.coverage until they settle.

The first record from a real request for CAMEO+ political Events on 11 November 2026. The excerpt keeps 19 of the record's 43 fields and changes no value.

curl "https://gdeltcloud.com/api/v2/events?category=POLITICAL&date_start=2026-11-11&date_end=2026-11-11&limit=3" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GDELT_API_KEY"

{
  "id": "cameoplus_f3eabd6d55a444cd",
  "url": "https://gdeltcloud.com/events/erdogan-updates-asset-freeze-listings-for-five-taliban-linke--cameoplus_f3eabd6d55a444cd",
  "family": "cameoplus",
  "title": "Erdoğan updates asset-freeze listings for five Taliban-linked individuals",
  "summary": "On 2026-11-11, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's decision was published in Turkey's Official Gazette and entered into force. It updated identity and passport information for five individuals linked to the Taliban who were already subject to asset freezes under UN Security Council resolutions. The decision amended the annex to an earlier Turkish cabinet decision.",
  "event_date": "2026-11-11",
  "observed_at": "2026-11-11T02:00:00.000Z",
  "coded_at": "2026-11-11T03:07:52Z",
  "category": "POLITICAL",
  "subcategory": "163",
  "subcategory_label": "Impose Embargo/sanctions",
  "event_code": "163",
  "geo": {
    "country": "Turkey",
    "region": "Middle East",
    "continent": "Asia",
    "admin1": null,
    "location": "Ankara",
    "latitude": 39.9334,
    "longitude": 32.8597,
    "geo_precision": 2,
    "geo_precision_label": "nearby_area"
  },
  "actors": [
    {
      "name": "President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan",
      "country": "Turkey",
      "role": "source",
      "primary": true
    },
    {
      "name": "Five Taliban-linked individuals",
      "country": "Afghanistan",
      "role": "target",
      "primary": true
    }
  ],
  "metrics": {
    "significance": 0.565,
    "goldstein_scale": -8,
    "confidence": 0.84,
    "article_count": 1,
    "evidence_source_count": 1
  },
  "has_fatalities": null,
  "fatalities": null,
  "story_refs": [
    {
      "id": "717e2802c04b",
      "url": "https://gdeltcloud.com/stories/turkey-updates-asset-freeze-listings-for-five-taliban-linked-717e2802",
      "title": "Turkey updates asset-freeze listings for five Taliban-linked individuals",
      "story_date": "2026-11-11",
      "article_count": 1
    }
  ],
  "top_articles": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.son.tv/resmi-gazetede-kritik-karar-taliban-baglantili-5-ismin-malvarligi-dondurma-listesindeki-bilgileri-guncellendi/",
      "title": "RESMÎ GAZETE'DE KRİTİK KARAR! Taliban bağlantılı 5 ismin malvarlığı dondurma listesindeki bilgileri güncellendi!",
      "domain": "son.tv"
    }
  ]
}

Every field is described in the API reference. The record's url opens its public page with the evidence behind it.

GET /api/v2/events filters by date window, place (country, region, first-level division, or a point and radius), category and code, actor or entity, full-text search and fatalities, and pages with a cursor. GET /api/v2/events/summary returns grouped counts and metrics for the same filters. Parameters, defaults and limits are in the parameter reference.

Requests carry an API key as Authorization: Bearer gdelt_sk_…. A free account includes a one-time 200-call starter credit for the API and MCP^[4]. Agents can use the same data through the MCP server at https://mcp.gdeltcloud.com/mcp^[5].

Monthly Parquet and gzipped CSV files carry the same rows the API serves, with identical column names, and each file publishes its sha256 digest, byte size and row count^[6]. The bulk events schema lists every column and the plans that include downloads.

GDELT Cloud's generated Events, Stories and scores are licensed by plan^[7]:

Source articles keep their publishers' terms, and the GDELT Project publishes its article stream under its own terms of use^[8]. The full rules are in the Terms of Service and on Data usage.

1. [1] The GDELT Project, GDELT 2.0: Our Global World in Realtimechecked 13 November 2026
2. [2] GDELT Cloud, Methodologychecked 13 November 2026
3. [3] GDELT Cloud, API responses captured for these pagesOur requestchecked 13 November 2026
4. [4] GDELT Cloud docs, API keyschecked 13 November 2026
5. [5] GDELT Cloud docs, MCP serverchecked 13 November 2026
6. [6] GDELT Cloud docs, Bulk events schemachecked 13 November 2026
7. [7] GDELT Cloud, Terms of Service: display rights by planchecked 13 November 2026
8. [8] The GDELT Project, Terms of usechecked 13 November 2026