The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) is an expert group of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) since the XXVIII SCAR Conference held on 30th July 2004 in Bremen Germany and a regional mapping project of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Ocean (GEBCO) operated under the joint auspices of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) (of UNESCO) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). The objective of IBCSO was to produce the first seamless bathymetric grid for the area south of latitude 60° S surrounding Antarctica. The IBCSO is going to be highly beneficial many scientific investigations. These include (a) interpretation of seabed geology, (b) the building of habitat models and maps, and (c) mapping and tracing of deep ocean current pathways. In addition the IBCSO is going to serve as an indispensable database for new nautical Charts in the Southern Ocean to improve the safety of navigation in Antarctic waters. After the inaugural meeting in 2004, the Editorial Board was then established at the 1st IBCSO Meeting at Santa Barbara in 2007 including representatives from several SCAR member countries. Since then, plenty of institutions holding bathymetric data in the Southern Ocean have been asked for a contribution to the IBCSO dataset. After the time consuming gathering, compilation and analyses of bathymetric data, finally the first version of the IBCSO is close to be released. Besides the grid an adjacent map has been developed, which is also going to be released in the near future. It is proposed to give an overview in what has been done in the IBCSO project in the last years for the creation of IBCSO v1. This will include acknowledgements to the data contributors and a short explanation of the working steps data acquisition, homogenization, cleaning and gridding. Previews of the new grid are going to demonstrate the improvement that has been achieved by IBCSO v1 compared to other bathymetric compilations like i.e. GEBCO 08. In addition a preview of the map will be presented.