There are 195 countries in the world: 193 United Nations member states plus 2 non-member observer states, Vatican City (the Holy See) and Palestine. That is the figure the UN itself works from, and the one used by the US State Department and most atlases. It is also only one of several defensible answers. The International Olympic Committee recognises 206 teams, FIFA has 211 member associations, and the ISO country-code standard lists 249 entries. None of these bodies is wrong — each is counting a different thing, for a different purpose.
Why 195 Is the Figure Most Sources Land On
UN membership is the closest thing the world has to a registry of sovereign states, which is why almost every count starts there. Admission is not automatic. An applicant state must first be recommended by the Security Council, where any of the five permanent members can veto it, and then approved by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly. That two-step process is explicitly political, and it is the reason several territories that function perfectly well as countries have never got in.
The two observer states sit just outside the membership. Vatican City has held permanent observer status since 1964 and has never applied to join, preferring a diplomatic role to a voting one — it maintains formal relations with more than 180 states without ever casting a General Assembly vote. Palestine was upgraded from an "observer entity" to a "non-member observer state" on 29 November 2012, by a vote of 138 in favour, 9 against and 41 abstentions. That change of wording mattered: it let Palestine accede to international treaties and join bodies including the International Criminal Court.
Add the 193 to those 2 and you get 195. It is worth noting how recently some familiar names arrived. Switzerland, neutral by long tradition, stayed out until a 2002 referendum finally took it in. Timor-Leste joined the same year, Montenegro in 2006 after separating from Serbia, and South Sudan in July 2011 — still the newest member, fifteen years on.
The Test a Territory Is Supposed to Pass
The working definition of a state comes from the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which set out four criteria: a permanent population, a defined territory, a functioning government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. On paper, meeting all four makes you a country.
In practice, lawyers split into two camps over what recognition adds. The declarative theory holds that a state exists once it meets the Montevideo criteria, and that recognition by others merely acknowledges an existing fact. The constitutive theory holds the opposite — that a state only becomes one when other states treat it as such. Real-world outcomes fall somewhere between the two, which is exactly why the count is unstable. Several territories satisfy all four Montevideo conditions and still cannot get a seat, because recognition is granted by governments with their own interests rather than by any neutral referee.
Five Organisations, Five Different Totals
| Authority | Count | What it is actually counting |
|---|---|---|
| United Nations | 193 | Full member states with a General Assembly vote |
| Common usage | 195 | UN members plus the Holy See and Palestine |
| International Olympic Committee | 206 | Recognised National Olympic Committees |
| FIFA | 211 | National football associations |
| ISO 3166-1 | 249 | Coded areas, including territories and Antarctica |
The sports federations run high because they were never built to adjudicate sovereignty. Both admitted members long before decolonisation settled the political map, and neither has any reason to expel a functioning association afterwards. That is how Puerto Rico, Guam, Bermuda, Hong Kong, and the Faroe Islands come to field teams under their own flags. FIFA's four British associations — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are a separate quirk entirely, a founding-era concession that inflates the total by three.
ISO 3166-1 is higher still because it is an addressing system, not a political statement. It needs a code for anywhere post, shipping or data might need to reach, so it covers uninhabited islands, Antarctica, and dependencies alongside sovereign states.
The Places That Break the Count
A handful of territories govern themselves completely while sitting outside the 195. Taiwan is the largest by far: it has its own government, military, currency and passport, and ranks among the world's twenty-five biggest economies, but formal diplomatic recognition has dwindled to around a dozen states as the People's Republic of China has steadily peeled allies away. Beijing's claim blocks any path to UN membership.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 and has been recognised by roughly 100 UN members, including the United States and most of the European Union. Serbia, Russia and China have not, and a Security Council veto keeps it out. Western Sahara presents the mirror image: the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is a full member of the African Union and recognised by dozens of states, yet Morocco administers around 80 per cent of the territory.
Somaliland has been the most quietly functional of the group, running its own elections, currency and border controls since declaring independence from Somalia in 1991, without a single state formally recognising it. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognised by Russia and a short list of its partners. Northern Cyprus is recognised by Turkey alone.
The list also shrinks. The Republic of Artsakh in Nagorno-Karabakh, self-governing for three decades and never recognised by any UN member, formally dissolved on 1 January 2024 following Azerbaijan's offensive the previous September — a reminder that these entries are not permanent fixtures. In the other direction sit the Cook Islands and Niue, self-governing states in free association with New Zealand that make their own treaties and belong to UN agencies, but have never sought a General Assembly seat.
Dependencies, and Why Puerto Rico Marches Separately
Roughly 60 dependencies and overseas territories exist beyond the sovereign states. Britain has 14 Overseas Territories, from Bermuda to the Falklands; France administers a dozen or so, including French Polynesia and New Caledonia; the United States has five inhabited territories, Puerto Rico much the largest at over three million people. Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand each hold others.
These are not countries, but the label conceals a wide spread of autonomy. Some are effectively integrated into the parent state. Others run their own immigration, tax and currency policy, and a few — Greenland and New Caledonia among them — have a legal route to independence written into their arrangements. Because several were admitted to sporting bodies decades ago, the same territories that never appear on a list of countries do appear at the Olympic opening ceremony. Puerto Rico has sent its own team since 1948. If territories interest you, our complete list of US territories covers the American cases in detail.
From 51 Members to 193
The modern number is a recent invention. The UN was founded in 1945 with 51 members, at a point when most of Africa, much of Asia and nearly all of the Caribbean was still governed from Europe. Decolonisation changed that within two decades. In 1960 alone, 17 African states became independent — a year still called the Year of Africa.
Three later ruptures did most of the remaining work. The Soviet Union's dissolution in December 1991 produced 15 states overnight. Yugoslavia broke apart in stages through the 1990s and 2000s into seven. Czechoslovakia split cleanly into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993, in a separation so amicable it is still known as the Velvet Divorce. South Sudan's 2011 referendum, in which 98.83 per cent voted to leave Sudan, produced the most recent addition. The states that vanished along the way are covered in our guide to countries that no longer exist.
The Referendums That Could Move the Number Next
Bougainville is the closest candidate. In a 2019 non-binding referendum, 97.7 per cent of voters in the autonomous Papua New Guinean region chose independence, and the two governments have since worked toward a settlement, though the timetable has repeatedly slipped and ratification rests with the PNG parliament.
New Caledonia held three referendums under the Nouméa Accord, in 2018, 2020 and 2021. The independence vote rose sharply across the first two before the third, boycotted by pro-independence parties over its timing during the pandemic, returned a lopsided result that remains contested. Greenland's 2009 self-rule act gives it an explicit path to full independence whenever its parliament chooses to take it, with economic dependence on Danish subsidy the practical brake. Somaliland continues to press its case after three decades.
None of these is certain, and none is imminent. But taken together they explain why "how many countries are in the world" has no permanent answer — the map has changed in every decade since 1945, and there is no reason to expect the next one to be different. For now, 195 is the number to quote, with the caveat that the person asking may well mean something closer to 206 or 249. If you would rather test the list than read about it, our countries quiz runs through all 195, and the guide to landlocked countries picks out the 44 of them that have no coastline at all.