Altair Map, Is it possible to add a basemap?

Question

I am working on a very basic map using Altair, using vector data (point locations). General visualization capabilities are great, but I can not find out if it is possible to use a basemap with my map.

Something similar to mpl_toolkits.basemap maybe?

Answer 1

No, as of the current version (Altair 4.0), there is no functionality to add basemaps to geographic charts in Altair. The relevant Vega-Lite feature request can be found here: https://github.com/vega/vega-lite/issues/5758