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We introduce and study the problem of constructing geometric graphs that have few vertices and edges and that are universal for planar graphs or for some sub-class of planar graphs; a geometric graph is universal for a class H of planar graphs if it contains an embedding, i.e., a crossing-free drawing, of every graph in H . Our main result is that there exists a geometric graph with n vertices and O(nlogn) edges that is universal for n-vertex forests; this extends to the geometric setting a well-known graph-theoretic result by Chung and Graham, which states that there exists an n-vertex graph with O(nlogn) edges that contains every n-vertex forest as a subgraph. Our O(nlogn) bound on the number of edges is asymptotically optimal. We also prove that, for every h>0 , every n-vertex convex geometric graph that is universal for the class of the n-vertex outerplanar graphs has Ωh(n2−1/h) edges; this almost matches the trivial O(n2) upper bound given by the n-vertex complete convex geometric graph. Finally, we prove that there is an n-vertex convex geometric graph with n vertices and O(nlogn) edges that is universal for n-vertex caterpillars.