We present the second portion of an unbiased survey of the Galactic plane for 6668‐MHz methanol masers. This section of the survey spans the longitude range 6° to 20°. We report the detection of 119 maser sources, of which 42 are new discoveries. The masers are tightly constrained to the Galactic plane, with only four outside a latitude range of ±1°. This longitude region includes the brightest known 6668‐MHz methanol maser, 9.621+0.196, as well as the two brightest newly discovered sources in the southern survey as a whole. We list all the sources associated with the 3‐kpc arms within ±15° longitude and consider further candidates beyond 15° longitude. We identify three new sources associated with the Galactic bar and comment on the density of masers in relation to the bar orientation.

We present the fifth portion of an unbiased survey of the Galactic plane, |b| ≤ 2• , for 6668-MHz methanol masers. This section of the survey completes the Galactic longitude range visible to the Parkes radio telescope, incorporating the longitude range 20• -60• . Within this section of the survey we find 265 methanol masers, 64 new to the survey, bringing the total number of methanol masers detected across the full longitude coverage (186• , through 0 • , to 60 • ) to 972 sources.

We have conducted a Galactic plane survey of methanol masers at 6668 MHz using a seven‐beam receiver on the Parkes telescope. Here we present results from the first part, which provides sensitive unbiased coverage of a large region around the Galactic Centre. Details are given for 183 methanol maser sites in the longitude range 345° through the Galactic Centre to 6°. Within 6° of the Galactic Centre, we found 88 maser sites, of which more than half (48) are new discoveries. The masers are confined to a narrow Galactic latitude range, indicative of many sources at the Galactic Centre distance and beyond, and confined to a thin disc population; there is no high‐latitude population that might be ascribed to the Galactic bulge. Within 2° of the Galactic Centre the maser velocities all lie between −60 and +77 km s−1, a range much smaller than the 540 km s−1 range observed in CO. Elsewhere, the maser with highest positive velocity (+107 km s−1) occurs, surprisingly, near longitude 355° and is probably attributable to the Galactic bar. The maser with the most negative velocity (−127 km s−1) is near longitude 346°, within the longitude–velocity locus of the near side of the ‘3‐kpc arm’. It has the most extreme velocity of a clear population of masers associated with the near and far sides of the 3‐kpc arm. Closer to the Galactic Centre the maser space density is generally low, except within 0.25 kpc of the Galactic Centre itself, the ‘Galactic Centre zone’, where it is 50 times higher, which is hinted at by the longitude distribution, and confirmed by the unusual velocities.

We present the fourth portion of a Galactic plane survey of methanol masers at 6668 MHz, spanning the longitude range 186 • -330 • . We report 207 maser detections, 89 new to the survey. This completes the southern sky part of the methanol multibeam survey and includes a large proportion of new sources, 43 per cent. We also include results from blind observations of the Orion-Monoceros star-forming region, formally outside the latitude range of the methanol multibeam survey; only the four previously known methanol emitting sites were detected, of which we present new positions and spectra for masers at Orion A (south) and Orion B, obtained with the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) array.

We present results from the third portion of the Methanol Multibeam Galactic plane survey of masers at 6668 MHz. It covers the longitude range 330°–345°, yielding 198 masers, of which more than 40 per cent are new discoveries. The maser population in this longitude range is the densest anywhere in the Galaxy, with many sources delineating a large portion of the Norma spiral arm close to its tangent point, and a cluster defining the southern tangent point of the 3‐kpc ring. Two sources lie outside the solar circle, on the far side of the Galaxy, more than 15 kpc away.