North America Map: All 23 Countries, Their Capitals and Regions

Canada, at 9,984,670 km², is the largest of the 23 sovereign countries on a political map of North America, a continent of about 24.7 million km² that is the third largest after Asia and Africa. Canada, the United States and Mexico fill most of the map. South of Mexico come the seven Central American states from Guatemala to Panama, and to the east the 13 island nations of the Caribbean, the smallest of which, Saint Kitts and Nevis at 261 km², is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere. Alongside them sit more than 20 dependent territories, led by Greenland, the world's largest island, which belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark. In 2021 the continent had more than 590 million people, about 7.5 percent of the world total.

The 23 Countries of North America in One Table

Areas and populations below come from the table of North American states in Wikipedia's North America article, which uses United Nations population estimates for 2021. The United States figure there is 9,629,091 km², a measure that excludes some coastal and territorial waters; other sources put it at over 9.8 million km², which is why its rank against Canada differs between atlases.

Canada, the United States and Mexico

Geographers split the continent into Northern America and Middle America. Northern America means Canada, the United States, Greenland and the small territories of Bermuda and Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and on a map it is almost all of the land north of the Rio Grande.

Canada is the second-largest country in the world by total area, with ten provinces and three territories reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and north into the Arctic Ocean, and the longest coastline of any country. Its 2021 population of about 38 million gives it a density of 3.7 people per km².

The United States, with about 337 million people in 2021, is by far the most populous country on the continent. Alaska, separated from the lower 48 states by Canada, holds Denali, the highest peak in North America at 6,190 m (20,310 ft), while the lowest point, Badwater Basin in Death Valley, California, lies 86 m (282 ft) below sea level. The two countries share the longest international border in the world: 8,891 km including the Great Lakes and coastal boundaries, made up of 6,416 km along the contiguous states and 2,475 km along Alaska.

Mexico, Where Northern America Meets the Tropics

Mexico is grouped with Middle America, though on a map it reads as the tapering southern end of the same landmass. Its 1,964,375 km² is divided into 32 federal entities, 31 states plus Mexico City, and with 126.7 million people in 2021 it has been the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world since at least the 1970s. The 3,145 km border with the United States runs from the Pacific near Tijuana and San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Rio Grande, and for long stretches follows the river itself. Greater Mexico City is the largest metropolitan area on the continent; it and New York are the only cities in North America with more than eight million people.

The borders on either side of the United States have grown twin cities that read as single urban areas on a detailed map. On the northern border, Detroit faces Windsor, Ontario across the Detroit River; on the southern, San Diego and Tijuana run into each other on the Pacific coast. A 2004 Border Transportation Partnership study found that US$13 billion in annual production depended on the Detroit–Windsor crossing, while in 2002 northbound freight through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry between San Diego and Tijuana was valued at about US$20 billion. Canada's own largest urban area, the Toronto census metropolitan area of about 7.1 million people, lies on the north shore of Lake Ontario, across the lake from New York State.

The Seven Central American States, Guatemala to Panama

Central America is the isthmus that narrows from the Mexican border to Colombia. Its seven countries share a volcanic Pacific spine and a wetter Caribbean coast, but differ sharply in size and history.

• Guatemala is the most populous, with 17.6 million people in 2021, and Guatemala City is the second most populous city in Central America.
• Belize, on the Caribbean coast, is the only Central American country with English as its official language, a legacy of British Honduras; Belizean Creole, Spanish and Mayan languages are also widely spoken. Its 400,031 people make it the least populous of the seven.
• Honduras (112,492 km²) has coasts on both the Caribbean and, through the Gulf of Fonseca, the Pacific.
• El Salvador, at 21,041 km², is the smallest and most densely populated country in continental America, nicknamed the "Tom Thumb of the Americas", and the only one in the isthmus without a Caribbean coast.
• Nicaragua is the largest Central American country by area, at 130,373 km².
• Costa Rica abolished its army in its 1949 constitution, adopted after a brief civil war in 1948, and is one of the few sovereign states without a standing military.
• Panama joins the continent to South America and is cut by the Panama Canal, an 82 km waterway between the Caribbean and the Pacific opened on 15 August 1914. Traffic grew from about 1,000 ships in its first year to 14,702 vessels in 2008.

The Thirteen Caribbean Island Nations

The other 13 countries are islands, and they fall into three groups on a map. The Greater Antilles are the big islands in the north: Cuba, the largest at 109,886 km²; Jamaica; and Hispaniola, the most populous island in the West Indies and the second largest after Cuba, which is divided between Haiti in the west and the Dominican Republic in the east. In 2021 Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic each had between 11.1 and 11.5 million people.

The Bahamas stand apart. The Lucayan Archipelago lies in the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Caribbean Sea, so it belongs to the West Indies without being strictly Caribbean, although the United Nations groups it with the Caribbean.

The Lesser Antilles curve south-east and south towards Venezuela and contain eight more sovereign states, seven of them under 1,000 km²: Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Barbados to the east, and Trinidad and Tobago, the largest of the group at 5,130 km² with 1.5 million people. Saint Kitts and Nevis, at 261 km² and about 48,000 people, is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere by both area and population, and the world's smallest federation.

Many of these islands are volcanic. Saint Lucia's Pitons, Gros Piton at about 798 m and Petit Piton at 743 m, are volcanic spires near Soufrière and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Territories on the Map

A full map of North America also shows land that belongs to countries outside the 23. The biggest is Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark: at 2,166,086 km² it is the world's largest island, yet its 2021 population of 56,243 gives it the lowest population density of any territory on Earth, about 0.026 people per km². Puerto Rico, a United States territory with about 3.26 million people in 2021, is more populous than 11 of the continent's sovereign countries.

The rest are small islands. The United Kingdom holds Bermuda, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos. The United States holds the US Virgin Islands as well as Puerto Rico. France has Guadeloupe and Martinique, which are full overseas departments, plus Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland, and the uninhabited Clipperton Island in the Pacific. The Kingdom of the Netherlands has Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, along with Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius. Saint Martin has been divided between France and the Netherlands since 1648, roughly 60:40, just as Hispaniola is split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Where the Map Ends: Panama, Trinidad and the ABC Islands

North America's southern edge is not drawn the same way in every atlas. Panama is sometimes treated as a transcontinental country, with land east of the Panama Canal counted as South America. Trinidad and Tobago, and the ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, lie just off the coast of Venezuela, so some sources place them in South America; most political maps keep them with the Caribbean and so with North America. That is why you will see counts of 23 countries in one source and slightly different totals elsewhere. For a closer look at each region, see our guides to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean island nations, or check the running total in how many countries are in North America.