There are 195 countries in the world — or 193, or 197, depending on who is counting and why. The most commonly used answer is 195: the 193 member states of the United Nations plus two permanent observers, Vatican City and Palestine. But the question is much less settled than it looks, and the disagreements are some of the most interesting geography there is.
Why the Number Is Argued About
There is no world authority that hands out the title of country. The usual test, from a 1933 treaty called the Montevideo Convention, is that a state needs a permanent population, defined territory, a government, and the ability to deal with other states.
In practice, what matters most is whether other countries recognise you. Taiwan has all four things on the Montevideo list — 23 million people, a government, an army and a currency — and is recognised by only about a dozen states, because China claims it as a province.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and is recognised by around 100 countries but not by Serbia, Russia or China, so it cannot join the UN. Somaliland has run itself since 1991 with its own currency and elections and is recognised by nobody.
The Biggest and the Smallest
Russia is the largest country by area at about 17.1 million square kilometres — roughly 11% of all the land on Earth, and larger than the whole of Antarctica or the surface of Pluto.
Vatican City is the smallest at 0.49 square kilometres, about the size of 60 football pitches, with around 800 residents. It fits inside Rome, and Central Park in New York is nearly seven times bigger.
By population, India is the largest with over 1.4 billion and Vatican City is again the smallest. The largest country in each continent is Russia in Europe and Asia, Algeria in Africa, Canada in North America, Brazil in South America and Australia in Oceania.
The Newest Countries
South Sudan is the youngest country in the world, having become independent from Sudan on 9 July 2011 after a referendum in which almost 99% voted to separate.
Before that, Montenegro split from Serbia in 2006 and Timor-Leste became independent in 2002. The 1990s produced a burst of new states as the Soviet Union broke into fifteen countries and Yugoslavia into seven.
The number of countries has more than tripled in a century. The UN had 51 members when it was founded in 1945; it has 193 now. Most of the growth came from decolonisation in Africa and Asia between 1945 and 1975 — 1960 alone is called the Year of Africa, when seventeen countries became independent.
Countries Inside Countries
Three countries are completely surrounded by one other country. Vatican City and San Marino are both inside Italy, and Lesotho is inside South Africa. These are called enclaved states.
Then there are landlocked countries — 44 of them, with no coastline at all. Two are doubly landlocked, meaning every neighbour is also landlocked, so you have to cross two borders to reach the sea: Liechtenstein in Europe and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.
The strangest borders are at Baarle, on the Belgian-Dutch frontier, where 22 Belgian exclaves sit inside the Netherlands and some of them contain Dutch counter-exclaves. The border runs through houses, and front doors decide which country you live in — houses with the door on the line have two numbers.
Try This: Guess the Country
Here is a game that teaches more geography than a list ever will. Pick a country and write down five clues about it, from vaguest to most specific.
Start with something like its continent or how many neighbours it has. Then its climate or its biggest export. Then a famous landmark. Then its capital city. Then its flag.
Take turns reading clues out one at a time and see how few it takes to get the answer. The interesting part is what makes a good clue: "has a coastline" tells you almost nothing, while "is doubly landlocked" narrows it to two countries immediately. Learning which facts are rare is the whole skill.
Borders Drawn With Rulers
Look at a map of Africa and you will see dozens of dead straight borders. That is because most of them were drawn in Europe by people who had never been there.
At the Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885, European powers divided Africa between themselves, often using lines of latitude and longitude. About 30% of African borders are straight lines, compared with almost none in Europe, where borders follow rivers, mountains and centuries of fighting.
The consequences are still felt. The straight lines cut through around 177 ethnic groups, putting the same people in two or three different countries and combining groups with nothing in common into one. The border between Egypt and Sudan runs along the 22nd parallel, and a small area called Bir Tawil is claimed by neither country — one of the very few genuinely unclaimed pieces of habitable land on Earth.
Capital Cities With Twists
Not every country has one capital. South Africa has three: Pretoria for the executive, Cape Town for the legislature and Bloemfontein for the judiciary. Bolivia has two, Sucre and La Paz.
Some capitals were purpose-built to avoid arguments between existing cities. Canberra was built because Sydney and Melbourne could not agree; Brasília was carved out of empty savannah in the 1950s; Washington DC, Abuja, Islamabad and Naypyidaw were all planned from scratch.
La Paz in Bolivia is the highest capital in the world at around 3,600 metres, high enough that visitors get altitude sickness. Quito in Ecuador is nearly on the equator. Reykjavik in Iceland is the northernmost, and Wellington in New Zealand the southernmost.
Records Worth Knowing
China and Russia both border fourteen countries, the most of any state. France, counting its overseas territories, borders eleven — including Brazil.
Canada has the longest coastline in the world at over 200,000 kilometres, mostly because of its Arctic islands. Bangladesh is the most crowded large country. Monaco is the most densely populated of all.
Chile is the longest country from north to south, stretching about 4,300 kilometres — around 38 degrees of latitude — while being on average only 177 kilometres wide. Russia is the widest, spanning eleven time zones.
Micronations
A micronation is a place that declares itself a country and that nobody recognises. There are hundreds of them and most are one person with a website, but a few are genuinely entertaining.
Sealand is a Second World War anti-aircraft platform in the North Sea, occupied in 1967 by a former British major who declared it a principality. It has a flag, a constitution, passports, a national anthem and a population that has occasionally reached double figures.
Ladonia in Sweden was declared around a driftwood sculpture. Molossia, in the Nevada desert, is a family's back garden and claims to be at war with East Germany. None of them meets the recognition test, which is exactly the point of the exercise for most of the people involved.
Countries That Do Not Exist Any More
The map is not permanent. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, East and West Germany, and Rhodesia have all vanished within the last fifty years.
Czechoslovakia split into Czechia and Slovakia on 1 January 1993 in what is called the Velvet Divorce, entirely peacefully and by parliamentary agreement. Yugoslavia broke apart in a series of wars through the 1990s.
Some countries have changed names. Burma became Myanmar, Swaziland became Eswatini in 2018, Macedonia became North Macedonia in 2019 after a long dispute with Greece, and Turkey asked the UN to register it as Türkiye in 2022. The Netherlands asked to stop being called Holland, which was only ever two of its twelve provinces.
How Countries Talk to Each Other
The United Nations was founded in October 1945 with 51 members and now has 193. Every member gets one vote in the General Assembly, so Tuvalu with 11,000 people has the same vote as India with 1.4 billion.
The Security Council is different. It has five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France — each of which can veto any resolution on its own. Those five were the main victors of the Second World War, and the arrangement has barely changed since.
There are hundreds of other international organisations. The European Union has 27 members and its own parliament and currency. The African Union has 55. ASEAN covers Southeast Asia, the Arab League the Arab world, and the Commonwealth 56 countries mostly once ruled by Britain. Most countries belong to dozens of them at once.
Country Names Mean Things
Almost every country name has a meaning, and the categories are surprisingly few.
Some are named after people: Colombia after Columbus, Bolivia after Simón Bolívar, the Philippines after King Philip II of Spain, Saudi Arabia after the Al Saud family, and America after the mapmaker Amerigo Vespucci.
Some describe the land. Iceland and Greenland were reportedly named misleadingly on purpose to control who settled where. Costa Rica means rich coast, Montenegro means black mountain, Sierra Leone means lion mountains, Ecuador means equator and Australia comes from a Latin phrase meaning southern land. Others are named for a people — France for the Franks, England for the Angles, Russia for the Rus. To keep exploring, read about flags of the world and find out how many countries there really are.
