Venezuela has 23 states, plus two other federal entities: the Capital District, which holds the centre of Caracas, and the Federal Dependencies, the country's offshore islands. A 2024 Venezuelan law also declares a 24th state, Guayana Esequiba, but it covers land that Guyana governs, that most of the world recognises as Guyanese, and that is under review at the International Court of Justice. That leaves 23 states actually under Venezuelan administration.
All 23 States and Their Capitals
Each state (estado) elects a governor and a one-chamber legislative council, and is divided into municipalities and then parishes. The capital is usually the state's largest city, with a few exceptions. Miranda is governed from Los Teques rather than its bigger suburbs of Caracas, and Nueva Esparta from the small colonial town of La Asunción rather than Porlamar. Areas and 2011 census populations are from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). No full census has been taken since.
- Amazonas: Puerto Ayacucho (180,145 km²; 146,480 people)
- Anzoátegui: Barcelona (43,300 km²; 1,469,747)
- Apure: San Fernando de Apure (76,500 km²; 459,025)
- Aragua: Maracay (7,014 km²; 1,630,308)
- Barinas: Barinas (35,200 km²; 916,264)
- Bolívar: Ciudad Bolívar (238,000 km²; 1,410,964)
- Carabobo: Valencia (4,650 km²; 2,245,744)
- Cojedes: San Carlos (14,800 km²; 323,165)
- Delta Amacuro: Tucupita (40,200 km²; 167,676)
- Falcón: Coro (24,800 km²; 902,847)
- Guárico: San Juan de los Morros (64,986 km²; 747,739)
- La Guaira: La Guaira (1,496 km²; 352,920)
- Lara: Barquisimeto (19,800 km²; 1,774,867)
- Mérida: Mérida (11,300 km²; 828,592)
- Miranda: Los Teques (7,950 km²; 2,675,165)
- Monagas: Maturín (28,930 km²; 905,443)
- Nueva Esparta: La Asunción (1,150 km²; 491,610)
- Portuguesa: Guanare (15,200 km²; 876,496)
- Sucre: Cumaná (11,800 km²; 896,291)
- Táchira: San Cristóbal (11,100 km²; 1,168,908)
- Trujillo: Trujillo (7,400 km²; 686,367)
- Yaracuy: San Felipe (7,100 km²; 600,852)
- Zulia: Maracaibo (63,100 km²; 3,704,404)
Several names honour independence leaders: Simón Bolívar, Antonio José de Sucre, Francisco de Miranda and the scientist-statesman José María Vargas, who gave his name to La Guaira state until 2019. Anzoátegui, Falcón, Lara and Monagas are named after other figures of the 19th century. Rivers gave their names to Apure, Guárico, Cojedes and Portuguesa, and the islands of Nueva Esparta ("New Sparta") were named in 1817 in honour of their resistance to Spanish forces during the independence war.
From Provinces to 23 States: How the Map Filled In
Venezuela left Gran Colombia in 1830 as a centralised republic of provinces. The federal states came out of the Federal War of 1859 to 1863, which the federalists won. The 1864 constitution renamed the country the United States of Venezuela and turned its 20 provinces into 20 states. Those boundaries did not hold. Under Antonio Guzmán Blanco the 20 were merged into nine large states in 1881. The 1901 constitution reversed that, and the core map of 20 states that Venezuelans recognise today was fixed by the early 20th century.
The big change since then has been along the edges. Two huge, thinly settled regions long remained federal territories, run directly by Caracas because they were too small in population to qualify as states under the 1961 constitution:
- Delta Amacuro, a federal territory since 1884, became the 21st state in 1991.
- Amazonas, a territory since 1864, was raised to statehood by a special law published in the Gaceta Oficial (No. 35.015) on 29 July 1992, taking effect on 31 December 1992. Puerto Ayacucho, on the Orinoco rapids, became its capital.
- Vargas was split from the old Federal District in 1998 to become the 23rd state. It covers the coast below the Ávila mountain, including Simón Bolívar International Airport and the port of La Guaira. A year later, in December 1999, catastrophic mudslides killed thousands of its residents.
The 1999 constitution turned the old Federal District into the Capital District, and in 2019 Vargas state was renamed La Guaira after its capital. The renaming did not change the count, which has stood at 23 since 1998. Lists that still show Vargas or federal territories are out of date.
The Capital District and the Island Dependencies
The two entities that are not states are easy to miss, but both belong to the first tier of government alongside the 23 states.
The Capital District (Distrito Capital) covers just 433 km² and corresponds to the Libertador municipality of Caracas, home to 1,943,901 people in the 2011 census. Its head of government is appointed by the president rather than elected. Much of metropolitan Caracas actually lies outside it: Chacao, Baruta, Sucre and El Hatillo, where most of the city's eastern half lives, are municipalities of Miranda state.
The Federal Dependencies (Dependencias Federales) are Venezuela's Caribbean islands outside Nueva Esparta: more than 300 islands, cays and islets with a combined land area of about 342 km² and just 2,155 residents in 2011. They include the coral archipelago of Los Roques (a national park since 1972), La Orchila with its naval base, La Tortuga and Los Monjes. Isla de Aves, a sandbank more than 500 km north of the mainland, also belongs to the dependencies, and it extends Venezuela's maritime zone deep into the eastern Caribbean. The national government administers them directly.
Guayana Esequiba: The 24th State on Venezuela's Map
Venezuelan maps have long shown the land west of the Essequibo River as a zona en reclamación, a zone under claim. It covers roughly 159,500 km², more than two-thirds of Guyana. An 1899 arbitral award in Paris gave the area to British Guiana. In 1962 Venezuela declared the award null and void. The 1966 Geneva Agreement, signed just before Guyana's independence, created a process for settling the dispute, but it produced no settlement. Guyana has administered the territory throughout, as parts of six of its ten regions.
The status changed on paper in two steps:
- On 3 December 2023, Venezuela held a consultative referendum in which voters approved, among other questions, creating a state called Guayana Esequiba. Two days before the vote, the International Court of Justice ordered Venezuela to refrain from any action that would change the situation on the ground.
- On 3 April 2024, President Nicolás Maduro signed the Organic Law for the Defence of Guayana Esequiba, which declares the territory a Venezuelan state, with its administrative seat at Tumeremo in Bolívar state, outside the claimed area.
On 25 May 2025 Venezuela went further and elected a "governor" and legislators for the new state. The vote took place on the Venezuelan side of the border, since Venezuela controls none of the territory, and it went ahead even though the ICJ had ordered Venezuela on 1 May 2025 not to hold it. Retired admiral Neil Villamizar won with a few thousand votes. Guyana, CARICOM, the United States and the European Union called the vote illegitimate.
The legal question is still open. Guyana took the case to the ICJ in 2018. The court confirmed its jurisdiction in 2020, rejected Venezuela's preliminary objection in 2023, and heard the merits in May 2026. A judgment had not been delivered at the time of writing. So "24 states" is Venezuela's own legal position, and "23" is the number of states it actually governs. More on the Guyanese side of the river is in our Guyana country guide.
Bolívar to Nueva Esparta: How Unequal the States Are
Venezuela covers 916,445 km², and its two southern states take up almost half of it. Bolívar, at 238,000 km², is nearly the size of the United Kingdom and holds the Guiana Highlands, the Gran Sabana tepuis, Angel Falls and the Guri dam on the Caroní River. Next door, Amazonas is 180,145 km² of rainforest with fewer than 150,000 people in 2011. That is less than one person per square kilometre, and many residents belong to Indigenous peoples such as the Yanomami and Piaroa (Wothïha).
Population follows the opposite pattern. Most Venezuelans live in the north, along the coastal mountain range and around Lake Maracaibo. Zulia (3.7 million in 2011) is the most populous state and home to Maracaibo, the second city. Miranda (2.68 million) and Carabobo (2.25 million) follow. Carabobo has only about 2% of Bolívar's area but more people, packed around Valencia and the industrial corridor towards Puerto Cabello. Nueva Esparta is the smallest state: Margarita, Coche and Cubagua islands, 1,150 km² in all. La Guaira (1,496 km²) is the smallest on the mainland. These figures date from 2011. Several million Venezuelans have emigrated since 2015, so current state populations are estimates, not counts.
Venezuela's States vs Colombia's 32 Departments
Colombia, Venezuela's longest land neighbour, has 32 departments plus the Capital District of Bogotá, against Venezuela's 23 states plus the Capital District and the Federal Dependencies. The two countries share an origin, both having been part of Gran Colombia until 1830. In the early 1990s both also upgraded their thinly populated frontier lands. Colombia's 1991 constitution turned its nine remaining intendancies and commissaries into full departments, including Amazonas, Guainía, Vaupés, Vichada and Arauca. Three of them, Arauca, Vichada and Guainía, border Venezuela. Venezuela raised Delta Amacuro and Amazonas to statehood in 1991 and 1992. Each country now has an Amazonas, although they do not touch: Venezuela's Amazonas faces Colombia's Vichada and Guainía across the Orinoco, Atabapo and Guainía rivers.
The units differ in what they are. Venezuela's 1999 constitution describes a "decentralised federal state", so its states have constitutions of their own and elected legislatures. Colombia is a unitary republic, and its departments are administrative divisions of a single state, even though their governors have been elected since 1991. Colombia also divides a larger country (1,141,748 km²) into more pieces. Its average department is about 35,700 km², against roughly 39,800 km² for a Venezuelan state, and its extremes are narrower. Colombia's largest department, Amazonas (about 109,700 km²), is less than half the size of Bolívar. Its smallest, the island department of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, is far smaller than Nueva Esparta. Our guide to how many departments Colombia has lists all 32, and the article on the countries that border Venezuela follows the frontier that both sets of states line up against.