The Caribbean islands form a 3,200-kilometre arc from the Bahamas, just off Florida, to Trinidad, just off Venezuela. They hold 13 independent countries: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. Alongside them are more than a dozen territories governed by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. On a map the islands fall into four groups: the Lucayan Archipelago, the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and the ABC islands off the South American coast. Cuba is the largest island and country; Saint Kitts and Nevis is the smallest independent state.
Following the arc from Florida to Venezuela
The simplest way to read the map is to start at Miami and travel south-east. The Bahamas lie first, on shallow banks east of Florida. Next comes the line of big islands, Cuba, Hispaniola, with Jamaica to the south, and Puerto Rico, that geographers call the Greater Antilles. East of Puerto Rico the islands shrink and bend south in a tight chain, the Lesser Antilles, which curves down to Grenada and the coast of Venezuela. Inside that ring lies the Caribbean Sea itself, about 2.75 million km². Outside it is the open Atlantic, which is why the eastern islands catch the trade winds and most of the hurricanes, between June and November. For the sea's exact position and coordinates, see our page on where the Caribbean is.
The Lucayan Archipelago: the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos
The Bahamas (capital Nassau, on New Providence) are made up of about 700 islands and cays and more than 2,000 rocks spread over some 13,900 km² of land. Strictly they lie in the Atlantic, not the Caribbean Sea, but they are almost always counted with the region. The closest of them, Bimini, is only about 80 kilometres from the Florida coast, Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands lie not much further out, and the chain then runs more than 900 kilometres south-east to Great Inagua near Cuba; and San Salvador on the eastern edge is the leading candidate for Columbus's first landfall in October 1492. The islands sit on limestone platforms barely above sea level, and the deep channel between two of them, the Tongue of the Ocean, drops to more than 1,800 metres. At the south-east end of the same chain are the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British overseas territory with its capital at Cockburn Town on Grand Turk.
The Greater Antilles: four big islands, one shared
The four largest islands hold almost 90% of the Caribbean's land and most of its 44 million people. Cuba (Havana), about 1,250 kilometres long, is by far the biggest, with roughly 110,000 km² including the Isla de la Juventud. South of it lies Jamaica (Kingston), and between the two, west of Jamaica, the British Cayman Islands (George Town), perched beside the Cayman Trench, at more than 7,600 metres the deepest point in the Caribbean Sea.
Hispaniola, the second-largest island at about 76,000 km², is divided between two countries. Haiti (Port-au-Prince) holds the western third and the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo) the eastern two-thirds. The 376-kilometre border between them is one of the starkest on any map: satellite images show forested Dominican hills on one side and far barer Haitian slopes on the other. Haiti became independent in 1804 after the only successful large-scale slave revolt in history, making it the second independent country in the Americas after the United States. Santo Domingo, founded in 1496, is the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the Americas. The island also carries the Caribbean's highest summit, Pico Duarte, at 3,098 metres. Further east is Puerto Rico (San Juan), an unincorporated territory of the United States whose residents are US citizens, and just north of it the Puerto Rico Trench plunges to about 8,376 metres, the deepest point in the whole Atlantic.
The Leeward Islands: from the Virgin Islands to Guadeloupe
The northern half of the Lesser Antilles is the most politically crowded stretch of map anywhere. Just east of Puerto Rico are the US Virgin Islands (Charlotte Amalie) and the British Virgin Islands (Road Town). Next come Anguilla (British) and Saint Martin, an island of just 87 km² divided between French Saint-Martin and Dutch Sint Maarten, the smallest inhabited island shared by two countries. Nearby are French Saint-Barthélemy and the Dutch islands of Saba and Sint Eustatius.
Two independent states follow. Saint Kitts and Nevis (Basseterre), about 261 km², is the smallest country in the Americas by both area and population. Antigua and Barbuda (St John's) lies to its east. Between them sits British Montserrat, whose capital, Plymouth, was buried by the Soufrière Hills volcano in 1995–97; the government now works from Brades in the north. The chain ends with Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France and therefore part of the European Union, with the euro as its currency.
The Windward Islands and the southern end of the chain
Dominica (Roseau) is the most mountainous and forested of the small islands; it is not to be confused with the Dominican Republic. Then come French Martinique, whose Mount Pelée destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre in 1902 in the deadliest eruption of the twentieth century, Saint Lucia (Castries), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Kingstown) and Grenada (St George's).
All of these islands sit on a volcanic arc where the Atlantic seafloor is pushed beneath the Caribbean Plate. Saint Vincent's La Soufrière erupted most recently, in April 2021. Two independent states lie off the arc. Barbados (Bridgetown), about 160 kilometres east of Saint Vincent, is made of coral limestone rather than volcanic rock and became a republic in 2021. Trinidad and Tobago (Port of Spain) at the southern end is really a piece of South America: Trinidad stands on the continental shelf only 11 kilometres from Venezuela at the narrowest point and has the region's largest oil and gas reserves.
The ABC islands and the Dutch Caribbean
Off the coast of Venezuela, outside the main arc, lie Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, the ABC islands. Since the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved in 2010, Aruba (Oranjestad) and Curaçao (Willemstad), along with Sint Maarten, have been self-governing countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius became special municipalities of the Netherlands itself. Dry and windswept, the ABC islands lie south of the usual hurricane track.
Languages and currencies follow the old empires
The quickest way to read the Caribbean's political map is through language, because each island still speaks the language of the power that held it longest. English is official in Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and the small Eastern Caribbean states, all former British colonies and Commonwealth members. Spanish is spoken in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. French is official in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole, the language most Haitians actually speak at home, and in Guadeloupe and Martinique. Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire use Dutch and Papiamento, a creole drawing on Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. Saint Lucia and Dominica, both fought over by France and Britain before ending up British, still have widely spoken French-based creoles, known as Kwéyòl.
Money tells a similar story. Six independent states, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, share one currency, the Eastern Caribbean dollar, with Anguilla and Montserrat. It has been pegged at 2.70 to the US dollar since 1976. The US dollar itself is used in Puerto Rico, the US and British Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos and Bonaire, while Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy use the euro.
Weather ignores all of these lines. Hurricane Maria in 2017 devastated both independent Dominica and US-governed Puerto Rico, and in July 2024 Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 5 storm on record in the Atlantic, flattening much of Carriacou in Grenada. Regional bodies such as CARICOM, founded by the Treaty of Chaguaramas in 1973, exist partly to share that risk across borders.
Who governs the rest of the map
The territories are a legacy of four colonial powers that never fully left. The United States holds Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The United Kingdom keeps five overseas territories: Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos. France governs Guadeloupe and Martinique as full overseas departments, plus the collectivities of Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy. The Netherlands holds Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and the three special municipalities. Several territories, from the Caymans to the British Virgin Islands, are major offshore financial centres, which helps explain why they chose not to pursue independence.
That patchwork is also why counts of Caribbean "countries" vary from 13 to more than 25, depending on whether territories are included. For each independent state's capital, population and language side by side, our complete list of Caribbean countries sets out the 13 in one table, and the waters north of Puerto Rico are explored in our guide to where the Bermuda Triangle is.