#all this could be 100% wrong but jeez London being in the north is enough for me to think this is rotated 180 at least

[aurordream]

I think we’re looking at Galar upside-down.

Not in terms of in-game, of course. But as a pokemon-invested Brit, I’ve been looking closely at the map of the new region, and it didn’t make much sense to me at first. I was trying to find all the landmarks I know from my country in the new region, and nothing was in the right place. But I’ve since come to the conclusion the reason for this is simple - Game Freak didn’t directly copy the UK to create Galar, but actually turned it upside down, flipped it, and then greatly distorted the proportions.

Now that I’ve rotated and flipped the image, the parallels are starting to get clearer. The most obvious landmark for this comparison is London. The major city in the very north of the correctly-oriented Galar map is a definite London counterpart, and it is roughly in the right place, if we make the South East of England larger and significantly shrink the South West. You can very clearly see Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster, opposite the London Eye as in real life. The major tower in the centre reminds me a lot of the Post Office Tower as well.

Obviously in real life, London isn’t surrounded by snowy mountains. But game freak do seriously seem to be taking creative liberties with the exact geography of the region.

Immediately south we have this town, which was a little harder for me to place. But if we stick to approximately the same location compared to London, it is in roughly the same place as Oxford. And the building in the middle does remind me of the Radcliffe Camera, a major Landmark of Oxford University. We also see a huge Library in the trailer, which makes me wonder if it could be located here - the Radcliffe Camera is a library in real life.

South-west of this town in the original map we can see the hill figure from the trailer. Now, hill carvings like this are located all over the country, so there’s no immediate parallel here. However, a HUGE number of them are located in South and West England, including the oldest and most famous of the traditional horse carvings, the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire. 

...there’s also the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset, which I think the Galar figure has a greater resemblance to, but the location doesn’t fit as neatly and the carving also has certain... attributes that I don’t think Game Freak would want to reference in a family friendly game. (And I mean, more fool them, he’s one of my personal favourite landmarks)

Practically next to the hill figure, we can see a rocky area which looks like its probably going to contain the mines seen in the trailer. I think this could be intended to parallel Wales - in the flipped and rotated map its in pretty much the right place, and Wales has a long and rich mining history. South Wales also isn’t far from Wiltshire, an area that has a particularly large number of hill figures, and North Wales is very close to Liverpool and Manchester. Wales is also very mountainous; Snowdon is the highest mountain in the British Isles outside of Scotland, so the landscape would fit too - though in every other area Game Freak seem to have ignored the topography so perhaps we shouldn’t pay too much attention there.

Right next to the mines, we’ve got a big, industrial red-brick town with a stand out clock tower. I’ve seen a few people compare this to the Balmoral Clock in Edinburgh, and I can’t deny the resemblance. But considering its location and apparent proximity to ‘Wales’, the apparently industrial nature of the city, and the red colour of the buildings, I think it’s actually Manchester.

Beyond this town, things start to get a lot more rural and indistinct. I don’t think we can doubt that the area immeditately below ‘Manchester’ on the original map is the Lake District, as again its in exactly the right place on the rotated/flipped map.

Beyond this, there doesn’t seem to be anything distinct at all. The starting area seems to be simply generic English countryside, and although I’ve looked at the remaining towns I can’t personally locate them. If anyone else can, I am all for some answers!