How to Install `fiona` in Python

v1.10.1 Data & Science Python >=3.8 BSD 3-Clause

Fiona reads and writes spatial data files

Install pip install fiona

What is fiona?

Fiona reads and writes spatial data files

Fiona streams simple feature data to and from GIS formats like GeoPackage and Shapefile.

Fiona can read and write real-world data using multi-layered GIS formats, zipped and in-memory virtual file systems, from files on your hard drive or in cloud storage. This project includes Python modules and a command line interface (CLI).

Fiona depends on but is different from GDAL's own . Fiona is designed to be highly productive and to make it easy to write code which is easy to read.

PyPI page → Author: Sean Gillies

Quick Start

Minimal example to get started with fiona:

import fiona

print(fiona.__version__)

Installation

pip (standard)

pip install fiona

Virtual environment (recommended)

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate   # Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
pip install fiona

pip3

pip3 install fiona

conda

conda install -c conda-forge fiona

Poetry

poetry add fiona

Dependencies

Installing fiona will also install these packages:

attrs certifi click click-plugins cligj importlib-metadata

Verify the Installation

After installing, confirm the package is available:

python -c "import fiona; print(fiona.__version__)"

If this prints a version number, installation succeeded. If you see a ModuleNotFoundError, see the errors section below.

Installation Errors

Common errors when installing fiona with pip.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'fiona'

Cause: The package is not installed in the current Python environment.

Fix: Run pip install fiona. If using a virtual environment, ensure it is activated first.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'fiona' (installed but still failing)

Cause: pip installed the package into a different Python than the one running your script.

Fix: Use python -m pip install fiona to install into the interpreter you are running.

ImportError: cannot import name 'X' from 'fiona'

Cause: The function or class does not exist in the installed version.

Fix: Check the version with pip show fiona and upgrade with pip install --upgrade fiona.

pip: command not found

Cause: pip is not in PATH or Python was not added to PATH during installation.

Fix: Try python -m pip install fiona. On macOS/Linux try pip3.

PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied

Cause: No write access to the system Python package directory.

Fix: Use a virtual environment, or add --user: pip install --user fiona

SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED

Cause: pip cannot verify PyPI's SSL certificate — common behind corporate proxies.

Fix: Try: pip install --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org fiona

MemoryError when loading data

Cause: Dataset is too large to fit in RAM.

Fix: Read in chunks, filter columns on load, or consider Polars/Dask for out-of-core processing.

Recent Releases

Version	Released
`1.10.1` latest	2024-09-16
`1.10.0`	2024-09-04
`1.10.0rc1`	2024-08-22
`1.10b3`	2024-07-29
`1.10b2`	2024-07-11

Full release history on PyPI →

Manage fiona

Upgrade to latest version

pip install --upgrade fiona

Install a specific version

pip install fiona==1.10.1

Uninstall

pip uninstall fiona

Check what is installed

pip show fiona

Last updated: 2026-04-11 • Data from PyPI

How to Install fiona in Python