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Afghanistan
Afghanistan is a landlocked, mountainous country where Central and South Asia meet, bordered by Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China. The Hindu Kush runs across its centre, and its valleys carried Silk Road trade for centuries.
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Albania
Albania sits where the Adriatic meets the Ionian Sea, about 72 km across the Strait of Otranto from Italy. Sealed off from the world for decades under communist rule, it is now known for its rugged mountains, its Riviera and the ancient ruins of Butrint.
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Algeria
Algeria is the largest country in Africa by area, reaching from a Mediterranean coastline deep into the Sahara, which covers most of its land. Its capital, Algiers, faces the sea, and the country became independent from France in 1962.
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Andorra
Andorra is a tiny, mountainous country in the eastern Pyrenees between France and Spain. Since 1278 it has been ruled jointly by two co-princes, today the President of France and the Bishop of Urgell, and its official language is Catalan.
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Angola
Angola stretches along Africa's southwestern Atlantic coast, from the Namibian border north to the Congo River. Independent from Portugal since 1975, it emerged from a long civil war in 2002 and has grown into one of the continent's largest oil producers.
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Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda is a pair of low coral and limestone islands in the northern Leeward Islands of the Caribbean. Independent from Britain since 1981, it lives largely from tourism, and Antigua is said to have a beach for every day of the year.
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Argentina
The second-largest country in South America, stretching nearly 3,700 km from subtropical Iguazu Falls in the north to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip. Home to Aconcagua, the tallest peak outside Asia, and the birthplace of tango and Lionel Messi.
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Armenia
Armenia is a landlocked, mountainous country in the South Caucasus, bordered by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. It adopted Christianity as its state religion in the early 4th century, and its alphabet, created around 405, is still in use today.
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Australia
Federated in 1901 from six British colonies, Australia built Canberra from scratch as a compromise capital after rival Sydney and Melbourne couldn't agree who should lead the new Commonwealth. It's home to the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef system on Earth.
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Austria
A landlocked Alpine republic of about 9.2 million people, Austria was the core of the Habsburg empire until 1918. Mozart, Haydn and Schubert were all born on its soil, Vienna hosts one of the UN's four main offices, and the country has been neutral since 1955.
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Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan lies on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, where Eastern Europe meets Western Asia. Its capital, Baku, sits below sea level and grew around some of the world's earliest commercial oil fields. The Nakhchivan exclave lies to the west, beyond Armenia.
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The Bahamas
The Bahamas is an archipelago of some 700 low coral islands in the Atlantic, southeast of Florida and north of Cuba. Columbus made his first landfall here in 1492, and since independence from Britain in 1973 tourism and finance have driven its economy.
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Bahrain
Bahrain is a small island kingdom in the Gulf, tied to Saudi Arabia by a causeway and just west of Qatar. Once the seat of the ancient Dilmun trading culture and a great pearling centre, it struck the first oil on the Arab side of the Gulf in 1932.
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Bangladesh
One of the most densely populated large countries on Earth, home to over 170 million people in an area smaller than the US state of Iowa. Its National Parliament House in Dhaka, designed by architect Louis Kahn, is among the largest legislative complexes in the world.
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Barbados
Barbados is a coral island at the eastern edge of the Caribbean, out in the Atlantic beyond the Windward Islands. Independent from Britain since 1966, it became a republic in 2021 and lives largely from tourism and offshore finance.
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Belarus
Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Forests, lakes and wetlands cover much of its flat terrain. The Bialowieza Forest, shared with Poland, is home to European bison. It became independent in 1991.
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Belgium
A small country split along a language line: Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north, French-speaking Wallonia in the south, and a German-speaking community in the east. Brussels, officially bilingual, hosts the main institutions of the European Union and NATO.
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Belize
The only officially English-speaking country in Central America, and one of its least densely populated: barely over 400,000 people share a coast guarding the Belize Barrier Reef, the second-largest coral reef system on Earth, and the Great Blue Hole, a 300-metre-wide sinkhole visible from space.
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Benin
Benin is a narrow West African country between Togo and Nigeria, stretching north from the Gulf of Guinea to the Niger River. Independent from France in 1960 as Dahomey, it took the name Benin in 1975. Porto-Novo is the capital, Cotonou the largest city.
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Bhutan
Bhutan is a small Himalayan kingdom between China and India, rising from subtropical valleys to high glaciated peaks. A constitutional monarchy since 2008, it sells hydropower to India and limits tourism to protect its culture.
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Bolivia
Bolivia splits its capital in two: Sucre holds the judiciary, while La Paz, seat of the executive and legislature, sits so high in the Andes (~3,640m) it's the world's highest seat of government. Independence came in 1825, named for Simon Bolivar.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina touches the Adriatic only at Neum, a strip of coast about 20 km long. Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, and Mostar's Ottoman Old Bridge of 1566, destroyed in 1993, was rebuilt in 2004. The 1995 Dayton Agreement ended its war.
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Botswana
Botswana is a landlocked country in southern Africa, much of it covered by the Kalahari. It became independent from Britain in 1966, and diamonds found soon after made it one of the world's top producers. In the north, the Okavango River spreads into a vast inland delta.
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Brazil
South America's largest country by far, covering roughly half the continent's land and population, and home to about 60% of the Amazon rainforest. Christ the Redeemer, completed in 1931 atop Rio de Janeiro's Corcovado mountain, is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
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Brunei
Brunei is a sultanate on the north coast of Borneo, split into two parts by Malaysia's Limbang district. It chose not to join Malaysia in 1963, became independent from Britain in 1984, and has run on oil and gas since a strike at Seria in 1929.
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Bulgaria
Bulgaria has kept its name since 681, making it one of Europe's oldest states. The Cyrillic alphabet took shape here in the 9th and 10th centuries, and the Rose Valley still distills much of the world's rose oil. It joined the EU in 2007 and the euro in 2026.
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Burkina Faso
A landlocked country in West Africa, called Upper Volta until 1984 after the three branches of the Volta River that rise here. Its new name means roughly "land of upright people". The capital, Ouagadougou, hosts FESPACO, Africa's largest film festival.
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Burundi
Burundi is a small, landlocked country in the hills of East Africa's Great Lakes region, bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Independent from Belgium since 1962, it is among the world's poorest countries.
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Cabo Verde
Cabo Verde is an archipelago of ten volcanic islands in the Atlantic, about 570 km west of Senegal. Uninhabited until Portuguese settlement in the 1400s, it became independent in 1975 and is known for morna, its soulful music.
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Cambodia
Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument on Earth, a single temple in a capital city that once ruled territory spanning four modern countries: from 802 to 1431, the Khmer Empire built stone monuments across what are now Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand, before the temples were swallowed by jungle for centuries.
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Cameroon
Cameroon reaches from the Gulf of Guinea north to Lake Chad, between Nigeria and Central Africa. Formed in 1960 and 1961 from French and British territories, it keeps both French and English as official languages.
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Canada
The world's second-largest country by area, stretching six time zones from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic, yet home to fewer people than California. Confederated in 1867 as a self-governing dominion, still formally sharing its head of state with the United Kingdom.
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Central African Republic
The Central African Republic is a landlocked country at the centre of Africa, its capital Bangui set on the Ubangi River. Independent from France since 1960, it is rich in diamonds and timber yet remains among the poorest countries in the world.
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Chad
Landlocked and Africa's fifth-largest country by area, named after Lake Chad on its western border. The Sahara covers the north, where Emi Koussi in the Tibesti Mountains is the desert's highest peak, and the south is savanna. French and Arabic are the official languages.
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Chile
Chile runs roughly 4,300 km down South America's Pacific coast, never more than about 350 km wide, the longest north-south country on Earth. In the north lies the Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar place on the planet.
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China
The world's most populous country until India overtook it in 2023, and the world's second-largest economy. The Great Wall stretches roughly 21,000 km including all its branches. Taiwan has been governed separately since 1949; China claims it, and it is not a UN member.
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Colombia
The world's largest producer of emeralds, and the only South American country with coastlines on both the Pacific and the Caribbean. Cartagena's walled colonial old town, ringed by 16th-century Spanish fortifications, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Comoros
Comoros is a nation of three volcanic islands at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel, between Mozambique and Madagascar. Independent from France since 1975, it is one of the world's leading growers of ylang-ylang, used in perfume.
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Costa Rica
Costa Rica lies between Nicaragua and Panama, with coasts on both the Caribbean and the Pacific and a spine of volcanoes and cloud forest between them. Independent from Spain since 1821, it is known for ecotourism and its stable democracy.
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Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire lies on West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, between Liberia and Ghana, with lagoons along the coast and savanna in the north. Independent from France since 1960, it is the world's largest cocoa producer, centred on Abidjan.
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Croatia
More than a thousand islands line its Adriatic coast, where Dubrovnik's walled old town and the Roman palace of Emperor Diocletian in Split still stand by the sea. Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, joined the EU in 2013 and adopted the euro in 2023.
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Cuba
A US trade embargo beginning in 1960 cut off new car imports, so 1950s American cars remain a common sight on Havana's streets. Cuba became an independent republic in 1902, after the Spanish-American War ended Spanish colonial rule.
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Cyprus
Cyprus is the third-largest island in the Mediterranean, independent since 1960 and in the EU since 2004. Since 1974 a UN buffer zone has divided it; the north is run by a Turkish Cypriot administration recognised only by Turkey, and the map shows the whole island as Cyprus.
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Czechia
Prague Castle, begun in the 9th century, is recognized by Guinness World Records as the largest ancient castle complex in the world. Czechia's modern history is defined by two peaceful transitions: the 1989 Velvet Revolution and the 1993 Velvet Divorce from Slovakia.
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Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is Africa's second-largest country, spanning the Congo Basin with only a sliver of Atlantic coast. Independent from Belgium since 1960 and called Zaire from 1971 to 1997, it is rich in minerals.
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Denmark
The Dannebrog, Denmark's flag, is by tradition the oldest continuously used national flag in the world, dating to 1219. The 1849 constitution established one of Europe's oldest constitutional monarchies, still centered on Copenhagen.
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Djibouti
Djibouti is a small, arid country in the Horn of Africa, at the entrance to the Red Sea. Independent from France since 1977, it lives largely from its port, which handles most of landlocked Ethiopia's trade, and hosts several foreign military bases.
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Dominica
Dominica is a mountainous, rainforest-covered island between Guadeloupe and Martinique, known as the Nature Island of the Caribbean. Independent from Britain since 1978, it is home to the Kalinago Territory and the steaming Boiling Lake.
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Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic covers the eastern two thirds of the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with Haiti. It won independence from Haiti in 1844, and today tourism, mining and remittances drive one of the region's fastest growing economies.
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Ecuador
Ecuador is a country on the Pacific coast of South America, named after the equator that crosses it just north of the capital, Quito. It fits Pacific beaches, Andean volcanoes and Amazon rainforest into a small area, and its Galápagos Islands, about 1,000 km offshore, shaped Charles Darwin's thinking on evolution.
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Egypt
Home to the last surviving Wonder of the Ancient World: the Great Pyramid of Giza, built around 2560 BCE as a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu, stood as the tallest human-made structure on Earth for almost 3,800 years. The Great Sphinx guards its base.
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El Salvador
El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, a strip of volcanic highlands and Pacific coast. Independent from Spain since 1821, it emerged from civil war in 1992 and has used the US dollar since 2001.
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Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea is a small Central African country made up of a mainland region, Río Muni, and islands in the Gulf of Guinea, including Bioko. Independent from Spain since 1968, it was transformed by offshore oil found in the 1990s.
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Eritrea
Eritrea runs along the Red Sea coast in the Horn of Africa, rising from hot coastal lowlands to the cool highlands around Asmara. After a thirty-year war it won independence from Ethiopia, confirmed by a referendum in 1993.
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Estonia
Estonia runs one of the most digital governments on Earth: almost every public service is online, and citizens have voted over the internet since 2005. Skype was built here, and the country takes in more than 2,000 islands in the Baltic Sea.
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Eswatini
Eswatini is a small, landlocked kingdom between South Africa and Mozambique, rising from lowveld bush to mountains in the west. Independent from Britain since 1968, it changed its name from Swaziland in 2018 and is still ruled by a king.
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Ethiopia
Ethiopia is the only African country never colonized by a European power: when Italy invaded in 1895, Emperor Menelik II's forces decisively defeated them at the Battle of Adwa in 1896, the first time an African nation beat a European colonial army in open war.
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Fiji
Fiji is an archipelago of more than 300 islands in the South Pacific, most of its people living on Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Independent from Britain since 1970, it lives largely from tourism and sugar, and the 180th meridian runs through it.
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Finland
Finland has topped the UN World Happiness Report for multiple consecutive years. It also has more saunas than cars, roughly one for every two residents, a legacy of a bathing tradition older than the country itself.
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France
The world's most-visited country by international tourists, and its top agricultural producer in the European Union. Mont Saint-Michel, an abbey perched on a tidal island off Normandy, is cut off from the mainland twice a day when Europe's highest tides sweep back in.
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Gabon
Gabon sits on the equator along Central Africa's Atlantic coast, and rainforest covers most of the country. Independent from France since 1960, it has a small population and an economy built largely on oil, timber and manganese.
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The Gambia
The Gambia follows the Gambia River inland from the Atlantic for more than 300 km, rarely more than 50 km wide, with Senegal on every other side. Independent from Britain since 1965, it relies on farming, fishing and tourism along its beaches.
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Georgia
Georgia sits where Europe meets Asia, between the Black Sea and the peaks of the Greater Caucasus. Christian since the 4th century, it writes its language in its own alphabet and has made wine in buried clay jars called qvevri for about 8,000 years.
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Germany
Europe's largest economy and the world's third-largest, built in large part on precision manufacturing and machinery exports. Neuschwanstein Castle, built by Bavaria's reclusive King Ludwig II in the 1870s-80s, is the direct inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty Castle.
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Ghana
The first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from colonial rule, in 1957, and the origin of the Pan-African "black star" that other liberation flags later borrowed. Its Akosombo Dam holds back Lake Volta, the largest reservoir on Earth by surface area: an inland sea covering nearly 4% of the country.
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Greece
Home to nearly 10,000 islands, only about 170 of them inhabited. The Acropolis of Athens, crowned by the Parthenon, has stood watch over the city since the 5th century BCE and gave the world the word democracy.
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Grenada
Grenada is a small volcanic island nation at the southern end of the Windward Islands, with Carriacou and Petite Martinique to the north. Known as the Spice Isle for its nutmeg, it has been independent from Britain since 1974.
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Guatemala
Home to Tikal, an ancient Maya city-state once home to over 60,000 people, abandoned by the 10th century and swallowed by jungle until its rediscovery. Guatemala has 37 volcanoes, three still active, and more Mayan-language speakers than any other country on Earth.
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Guinea
Guinea curves along West Africa's Atlantic coast and inland to the highlands where the Niger River begins. In 1958 it became the first French colony in Africa to vote for immediate independence, and mining, above all bauxite, drives its economy.
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Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau is a small, low-lying country on West Africa's Atlantic coast, between Senegal and Guinea, with an island archipelago offshore. It declared independence from Portugal in 1973 after a long liberation war, recognised by Portugal in 1974.
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71
Guyana
Guyana is a country of rainforest and rivers on the north coast of South America, the only one on the continent where English is the official language. Independent from Britain since 1966, it has boomed on offshore oil since 2019. Venezuela claims the Essequibo region; the map follows the recognised border.
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72
Haiti
Haiti covers the mountainous western third of Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Born of a revolution against French rule, it has faced repeated disasters, including the 2010 earthquake, and is the poorest country in the Americas.
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Honduras
Honduras is a mountainous Central American country with a long Caribbean coast and a short stretch on the Pacific. Independent from Spain since 1821, it built its early economy on bananas and today also exports coffee and textiles.
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Hungary
Budapest was formed in 1873 when hilly Buda and Óbuda, on the west bank of the Danube, merged with flat Pest on the east bank. Hungarian, the national language, is Uralic rather than Indo-European, a distant relative of Finnish and Estonian.
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75
Iceland
Iceland's Althing, founded in 930 CE, is widely considered the world's oldest still-functioning parliament. Full sovereignty from Denmark came in 1944, and geothermal energy now powers about 90% of the country's heating.
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India
The world's most populous country, home to over 1.4 billion people and 22 officially recognized languages. Its flag's navy wheel is the Ashoka Chakra, a 24-spoke "wheel of law" adapted from a 3rd-century BCE pillar built by the emperor Ashoka.
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Indonesia
The world's largest archipelago, spanning over 17,000 islands across three time zones. Borobudur, the world's largest Buddhist temple, was built in the 9th century and then abandoned for centuries, buried under volcanic ash and jungle until its rediscovery in 1814.
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Iran
Iran lies between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, a high plateau ringed by the Alborz and Zagros mountains. Persepolis, begun around 518 BCE under Darius I, was a ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire. Tehran is the capital and largest city.
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79
Iraq
Iraq lies in ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where Sumerian cities such as Uruk developed some of the earliest known writing. Baghdad, founded in 762 as the Abbasid capital, is the capital today.
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Ireland
Home to the Cliffs of Moher and four Nobel laureates in Literature (Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and Heaney), more per capita than any other country. Irish (Gaeilge) is the state's first official language under the constitution, though English is the everyday language for most people.
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81
Israel
Israel is a country on the eastern Mediterranean coast, stretching from the Galilee in the north through the Negev desert to the Red Sea port of Eilat. It declared independence in 1948. Its borders with the Palestinian territories and with Syria are disputed; the map here follows the lines recognised by the United Nations.
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82
Italy
A peninsula shaped like a boot, unified into one kingdom only in 1861 after centuries of separate city-states and foreign rule. Home to more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other country, and to Vatican City, a sovereign nation entirely enclosed within Rome.
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Jamaica
Jamaica is a mountainous island in the Caribbean Sea, south of Cuba and west of Hispaniola. Independent from Britain since 1962, it earns its living from tourism, bauxite and remittances, and its music has travelled far beyond its shores.
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84
Japan
An archipelago of nearly 6,900 islands sitting on the Pacific Ring of Fire, home to over 100 active volcanoes. Mount Fuji, its highest peak at 3,776 metres and last erupted in 1707, is one of Japan's "Three Holy Mountains" and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Jordan
Petra was carved into rose-colored sandstone cliffs by the Nabataeans over 2,000 years ago and lay hidden from the Western world until a Swiss explorer reached it in 1812. Jordan became fully independent in 1946, after 25 years as a British-administered emirate.
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86
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country and the ninth largest overall, roughly the size of Western Europe. Its capital, Astana, was renamed twice in a decade before reverting to its original name in 2022.
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Kenya
Mount Kenya, Africa's second-highest peak, gave the country its name and sits almost exactly on the equator, snow-capped despite the latitude. Each year the Maasai Mara hosts part of the Great Migration, as huge herds of wildebeest and zebra cross from the Serengeti in search of fresh grazing.
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88
Kiribati
Kiribati is a nation of 33 coral islands in the central Pacific, spread across about 3.5 million square kilometres of ocean and straddling both the equator and the 180th meridian. Formerly the Gilbert Islands, it became independent from Britain in 1979, and since moving the date line in 1995 its Line Islands are the first land to greet each new day.
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Kuwait
Kuwait is a small desert state at the northwest tip of the Gulf, between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Oil found in 1938 turned a trading and pearling port into one of the richest countries per person, and it rebuilt after Iraq's 1990 invasion and occupation.
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90
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country in Central Asia where the Tian Shan mountains cover most of the land. Its capital is Bishkek, and Issyk-Kul, one of the largest mountain lakes in the world, lies in its northeast. It became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991.
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Laos
A landlocked sliver of mountains and the Mekong river valley, home to about eight million people and dozens of languages: the United States dropped more bombs on Laos between 1964 and 1973 than fell on Germany and Japan combined during the whole of the Second World War, making it the most heavily bombed country per capita in history.
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92
Latvia
Riga, founded in 1201, has one of the world's largest collections of Art Nouveau buildings. Latvia declared independence in 1918, restored it in 1990 after decades of Soviet rule, joined the EU and NATO in 2004, and adopted the euro in 2014.
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Lebanon
Lebanon is a small country on the eastern Mediterranean coast, between Syria and Israel. Its shore held the Phoenician ports of Byblos, Tyre and Sidon, and the Mount Lebanon range rises steeply behind it. It became independent from the French mandate in 1943.
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94
Lesotho
Lesotho is a small mountain kingdom set entirely inside South Africa, in the high Drakensberg and Maloti ranges. Independent from Britain since 1966, it sells water from its highlands to South Africa through a large dam and tunnel scheme.
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95
Liberia
Liberia lies on West Africa's Atlantic coast between Sierra Leone, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire. Settled from 1822 by freed Black Americans, it became independent in 1847, and it rebuilt after two civil wars that ended in 2003.
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Libya
Libya stretches along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, and the Sahara covers more than 90% of its land. Its coast holds the Roman ruins of Leptis Magna and Sabratha and the Greek city of Cyrene. It became independent in 1951, with Tripoli as its capital.
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97
Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein is a tiny Alpine principality on the Rhine between Switzerland and Austria, one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. It uses the Swiss franc and is among the richest countries per person.
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98
Lithuania
Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare independence, on 11 March 1990. Six centuries earlier the Grand Duchy of Lithuania reached from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Lithuanian is one of the oldest living Indo-European languages.
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Luxembourg
Luxembourg is a small, landlocked grand duchy between Belgium, France and Germany. A founding member of the European Union, it grew from steel to banking and EU institutions, and nearly half of its residents are foreign nationals.
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Madagascar
The world's 4th largest island, off Africa's south-east coast, split from the mainland some 160 million years ago and from India about 88 million years ago, long enough in isolation that around 90% of its wildlife exists nowhere else, including over 100 species of lemur.
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101
Malawi
Malawi is a narrow, landlocked country in southeastern Africa, stretched along the western shore of Lake Malawi. The lake covers about a fifth of the country and holds more fish species than any other lake on Earth.
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102
Malaysia
Malaysia comes in two parts: the Malay Peninsula and the north of Borneo, about 600 km apart across the South China Sea. It is a federation of 13 states whose king is chosen every five years from among nine hereditary Malay rulers, a rotating monarchy found nowhere else.
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103
Maldives
The Maldives is a chain of about 1,200 coral islands grouped into atolls, southwest of India and Sri Lanka. It is the lowest-lying country on Earth, Asia's smallest by area, and has been independent from Britain since 1965.
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104
Mali
A landlocked country in West Africa, crossed by the Niger River. Timbuktu and Djenné were centres of trade and Islamic learning in the Mali Empire, whose 14th-century ruler Mansa Musa is famed for his wealth. Djenné's Great Mosque is the world's largest mud-brick building.
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105
Malta
Malta is a small archipelago in the central Mediterranean, south of Sicily, and the smallest member of the European Union. Independent from Britain since 1964, its fortified capital, Valletta, was built by the Knights of St John.
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106
Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands is a nation of 29 coral atolls and 5 single islands in the central Pacific, set in two parallel chains, Ratak and Ralik. Independent since 1986 in free association with the United States, it includes Bikini and Enewetak, where the US tested nuclear weapons from 1946 to 1958.
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107
Mauritania
Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, sits on the Atlantic coast and is its largest city. Most of the country lies in the Sahara, whose sands hold the Richat Structure, a ring formation about 40 km across that is easy to spot from orbit.
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108
Mauritius
Mauritius is a volcanic island nation in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, with outer islands including Rodrigues and Agaléga. Independent from Britain since 1968, it grew from a sugar economy into one built on textiles, tourism and finance.
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109
Mexico
Home to the largest pyramid by volume on Earth (Cholula, bigger in bulk than Egypt's Great Pyramid) and Chichen Itza's El Castillo, where the equinox sun casts a shadow shaped like a serpent slithering down the steps.
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110
Micronesia
The Federated States of Micronesia is a federation of four island states, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae, spread across about 2,700 km of the western Pacific. Independent since 1986 in free association with the United States, it is home to the stone ruins of Nan Madol and to Yap's giant stone money.
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111
Moldova
Moldova is a landlocked country between Romania and Ukraine, with the Prut river along its western border. It declared independence from the Soviet Union on 27 August 1991. Its official language is Romanian, and its cellars at Milestii Mici hold a record wine collection.
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112
Monaco
Monaco is a tiny principality on the Mediterranean coast, surrounded on land by France. The world's second-smallest country and its most densely populated, it has been ruled by the Grimaldi family since 1297.
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113
Mongolia
Mongolia is the birthplace of Genghis Khan, who in 1206 unified its nomadic tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history. It remains the world's least densely populated sovereign country.
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114
Montenegro
Named for the dark, forested slopes of Mount Lovćen, Montenegro fits an Adriatic coastline, the fjord-like Bay of Kotor and the Tara River Canyon, one of Europe's deepest, into about 13,800 square kilometres. It voted for independence in 2006.
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115
Morocco
Morocco's capital is Rabat, not Casablanca, its largest city. It is home to Fes el Bali, the walled old city of Fez founded in the 9th century, one of the largest car-free urban zones on Earth. Morocco administers most of Western Sahara and claims it; the UN lists the territory's status as unresolved.
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116
Mozambique
Capital is Maputo, on a wide bay in the far south. Mozambique won independence from Portugal in 1975 and keeps Portuguese as its official language. Its Indian Ocean coast runs about 2,500 km, and the Zambezi crosses the country on its way to the sea.
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117
Myanmar
The capital is Naypyidaw, a purpose-built city named capital in 2005; it is not Yangon, the country's largest city and former capital. Myanmar is home to Bagan, where over 2,000 Buddhist temples and pagodas from the 9th to 13th centuries still stand across the plain.
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Namibia
Namibia runs along Africa's southwest coast, where the Namib, often called the world's oldest desert, meets the cold Atlantic. One of the least densely populated countries on Earth, it won independence from South African rule in 1990.
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Nauru
A speck of coral on the equator, twenty one square kilometres and twelve thousand people: seabirds turned it into a mountain of phosphate, the phosphate briefly made it among the richest places per person anywhere, and then it ran out.
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Nepal
Home to Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak at 8,849m, straddling Nepal's border with China. Never colonized, Nepal was unified into a single kingdom in 1768 by Prithvi Narayan Shah, and today its flag is the only national flag in the world that isn't a rectangle.
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Netherlands
About a quarter of the country sits below sea level, held back by a centuries-old system of dikes, canals and pumps. Amsterdam alone has over 100km of canals and more than 1,500 bridges, earning it the nickname 'Venice of the North.'
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New Zealand
In 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing country to give women the right to vote in national elections, a quarter-century before most of Europe. Wellington, not Auckland, is the capital: a mix-up visitors make constantly.
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Nicaragua
Nicaragua stretches from the Pacific to the Caribbean, with a line of volcanoes and two great lakes in the west and rainforest in the east. Independent from Spain since 1821, its colonial city of Granada sits on the shore of Lake Nicaragua.
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Niger
West Africa's largest country by area, landlocked and about four-fifths Sahara desert. Most people live in the south, along the Niger River and the border with Nigeria; the capital, Niamey, sits on the river. Uranium mined near Arlit has long been a major export.
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Nigeria
Africa's most populous country and largest economy, home to Nollywood, the world's second-largest film industry by number of films produced each year. Zuma Rock, a 725-metre monolith just north of Abuja, is nicknamed the "Gateway to Abuja" and appears on the 100-naira note.
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North Korea
North Korea occupies the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, bordering China, Russia and, across the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, South Korea. Founded in 1948, it is one of the most isolated countries in the world.
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North Macedonia
North Macedonia took its current name in 2019 under the Prespa Agreement with Greece, ending a dispute dating from independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. In the southwest, Lake Ohrid is one of Europe's oldest lakes, ringed by medieval churches.
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Norway
Of the five Nobel Prizes, only the Peace Prize is awarded outside Stockholm: Alfred Nobel's will sent it to Oslo instead. Oil discovered in the North Sea in the 1960s funded a sovereign wealth fund that is now the largest in the world.
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Oman
Oman sits on the southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula, facing the Arabian Sea. Its Musandam exclave, cut off from the rest of the country by the UAE, overlooks the Strait of Hormuz. Muscat once ruled a sea empire that reached as far as Zanzibar.
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Pakistan
Home to K2, the world's second-highest peak and widely considered its most technically difficult 8,000-metre climb. The Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, completed in 1673 under the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, held the title of the world's largest mosque for over 300 years.
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Palau
Palau is an island nation in the western Pacific, east of the Philippines, made up of about 340 islands of which only a handful are inhabited. Independent since 1994 in free association with the United States, it is known for its coral reefs and declared the world's first shark sanctuary in 2009.
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Palestine
Palestine is made up of two territories separated by Israel: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Declared a state in 1988, it has been a United Nations observer state since 2012. The UN regards both territories as occupied by Israel since 1967; the map follows the lines it recognises.
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Panama
Panama is the narrow isthmus joining Central and South America, between Costa Rica and Colombia. It broke away from Colombia in 1903, took full control of its canal from the United States in 1999, and uses the US dollar as currency.
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Papua New Guinea
The eastern half of the world's second largest island: a place that invented farming on its own, holds more languages than any country on Earth, and hid a million people from the outside world until 1930.
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Paraguay
Paraguay is a landlocked country in the heart of South America, split by the Paraguay River into a green, populated east and the dry Gran Chaco to the west. Independent from Spain since 1811, it is one of the few countries where an Indigenous language, Guarani, is spoken by most people alongside Spanish.
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Peru
Machu Picchu, the 15th-century Inca citadel perched at 2,430m in the Andes, was built without mortar and stayed unknown to the outside world until 1911. Peru is also home to a stretch of the Amazon rainforest and the northern edge of the Atacama, the driest desert on Earth.
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Philippines
An archipelago of about 7,641 islands, only around 2,000 of them named and inhabited. On Bohol island, over 1,260 near-identical grassy mounds called the Chocolate Hills turn brown in the dry season, a geological formation found nowhere else on Earth.
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Poland
Wawel Castle in Krakow, seat of Polish kings for over 500 years, is now the country's most visited art museum. Poland's borders have shifted dramatically across history: the country once vanished from the map entirely for 123 years, partitioned by its neighbors.
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Portugal
Europe's westernmost mainland country, and one of the oldest nation-states in the world with borders essentially unchanged since the 13th century. Belem Tower, built in the early 1500s to guard Lisbon's harbor, watched the ships of the Age of Discovery sail out toward Africa, India and Brazil.
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Qatar
Qatar is a small peninsula jutting north into the Persian Gulf, with a single land border, shared with Saudi Arabia. It sits on part of the world's largest natural gas field, which made it one of the richest countries per person, and it hosted the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
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Republic of the Congo
The Republic of the Congo stretches from a short Atlantic coastline to the Congo River, with dense rainforest across much of the north. Independent from France since 1960, it depends heavily on offshore oil, its main export.
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Romania
Romanian is a Romance language, a legacy of Roman rule after Trajan conquered Dacia in 106 AD. The Carpathian Mountains arc through the country's heart, and the Danube ends its 2,850 km journey here in the Danube Delta, one of Europe's largest wetlands.
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Russia
The world's largest country by area, spanning eleven time zones from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific, and home to Lake Baikal, the deepest lake on Earth. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014; the UN does not recognise the annexation, and the map shows Crimea as part of Ukraine.
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Rwanda
Rwanda is a small, landlocked country of green hills in East Africa's Great Lakes region. Independent from Belgium since 1962, it rebuilt after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and its volcanic northwest shelters mountain gorillas.
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Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Kitts and Nevis is a federation of two volcanic islands in the Leeward chain of the Caribbean, and the smallest country in the Americas by both area and population. It has been independent from Britain since 1983.
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Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia is a mountainous volcanic island in the eastern Caribbean, between Martinique and St Vincent. Independent from Britain since 1979, it is known for the twin Pitons and has produced two Nobel laureates, Derek Walcott and Arthur Lewis.
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Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a volcanic island and a chain of smaller islands, including Bequia and Mustique, in the southern Caribbean. Independent from Britain since 1979, its volcano, La Soufrière, last erupted in 2021.
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Samoa
Samoa is a Polynesian nation of two main volcanic islands, Upolu and Savai'i, in the South Pacific. Independent from New Zealand since 1962, the first Pacific island country to regain independence, it keeps strong traditions of fa'a Samoa, the Samoan way.
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San Marino
San Marino is a tiny republic on the slopes of Monte Titano, entirely surrounded by Italy. By tradition founded in 301 by Saint Marinus, it is said to be the oldest surviving republic in the world, and its three towers crown the ridge.
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São Tomé and Príncipe
São Tomé and Príncipe is a nation of two volcanic islands in the Gulf of Guinea, straddling the equator off the coast of Gabon. Independent from Portugal since 1975, it is one of Africa's smallest countries and grows cocoa in its rainforest.
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Saudi Arabia
Home to Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest cities, Saudi Arabia hosts the Hajj each year, a pilgrimage every able Muslim is expected to make once in their lifetime. The kingdom, unified in 1932, sits atop some of the largest oil reserves on Earth.
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Senegal
A West African country on the Atlantic, wrapped almost entirely around The Gambia. Its capital, Dakar, sits on the Cap-Vert peninsula, the westernmost point of mainland Africa. Just offshore, Gorée Island is a memorial to the Atlantic slave trade.
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Serbia
Serbia is a landlocked country in the central Balkans, crossed by the Danube. Its capital, Belgrade, sits where the Sava meets the Danube. Kosovo, in the south, declared independence in 2008; about half of UN members recognise it, but Serbia does not.
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Seychelles
An archipelago of 115 granite and coral islands scattered across the western Indian Ocean, and Africa's smallest country by both population and land area. Almost everyone lives on the granitic Inner Islands around Mahé, while remote Aldabra Atoll shelters the world's largest population of giant tortoises.
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Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone sits on West Africa's Atlantic coast between Guinea and Liberia. Independent from Britain since 1961, it came through a civil war that ended in 2002, and its economy still leans on mining, including the diamonds it is known for.
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Singapore
Singapore did not choose independence: it was expelled from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965, a forced separation Lee Kuan Yew announced on television in tears. It then built itself into one of the world's busiest ports and a major financial hub within a generation.
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Slovakia
Bratislava is the only national capital that borders two other countries, Austria and Hungary. Slovakia split peacefully from Czechia on 1 January 1993, adopted the euro in 2009, and builds more cars per person than any other country.
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Slovenia
The Julian Alps, deep karst caves and about 47 km of Adriatic coast all fit inside this small country. Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, joined the EU and NATO in 2004 and in 2007 became the first former communist state to adopt the euro.
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Solomon Islands
The Solomon Islands is a Melanesian archipelago of nearly a thousand islands east of Papua New Guinea. Independent from Britain since 1978, it saw fierce fighting on Guadalcanal in the Second World War and still relies on fishing, timber and farming.
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Somalia
Somalia, on the Horn of Africa, has the longest coastline on the African mainland. It formed in 1960 from British and Italian Somaliland. Somaliland, in the north, has governed itself since 1991 but is recognised only by Israel; the map follows Somalia's internationally recognised borders.
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South Africa
One of the only countries with three capital cities (Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein), split that way in 1910 as a compromise between rival former colonies. Table Mountain in Cape Town is flanked by cliffs so sheer a cable car has carried visitors to its flat summit since 1929.
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South Korea
Rebuilt from one of the world's poorest countries after the Korean War into a top-15 global economy within two generations, a transformation often called the "Miracle on the Han River." Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, first built in 1395, remains the largest of the city's five grand palaces.
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South Sudan
South Sudan is a landlocked country in East Africa that voted to separate from Sudan and became independent in 2011. The White Nile flows north through it, and oil provides nearly all of its export earnings.
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Spain
Home to the Alhambra, a Moorish palace-fortress in Granada built mainly under the 14th-century Nasrid dynasty, and to Basque, a language isolate spoken in the north unrelated to any other language on Earth. Spain has the second-most UNESCO World Heritage Sites of any country, after Italy.
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Sri Lanka
A teardrop-shaped island off the southern tip of India, separated from it by the shallow Palk Strait and the chain of shoals known as Adam's Bridge. Over two thousand years of continuous civilization, including Sigiriya, a 5th-century royal citadel atop a 200-metre granite outcrop.
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Sudan
Where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet at Khartoum. Sudan was the heart of the ancient Kingdom of Kush, whose kings once ruled Egypt, and its desert holds more pyramids than Egypt's. Independent since 1956, it was Africa's largest country until South Sudan seceded in 2011.
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Suriname
Suriname is the smallest country in South America, on the Atlantic coast between Guyana and French Guiana, and more than nine tenths of it is rainforest. A Dutch colony until 1975, it is the continent's only Dutch-speaking country, and its people trace their roots to Indigenous, African, Indian, Javanese, Chinese and European ancestors.
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Sweden
Sweden has awarded the Nobel Prize in Stockholm every year since 1901: all but the Peace Prize, which Alfred Nobel's will assigned to Norway instead. The capital sits across 14 islands in a Baltic archipelago of roughly 30,000.
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Switzerland
A landlocked Alpine country of about 9 million people, wedged between France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Liechtenstein. Its Confederation traces to a 1291 pact, and its neutrality has held unbroken since 1815, even through both World Wars, under frequent public referendums.
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Syria
Syria lies on the eastern Mediterranean, bordered by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. Damascus and Aleppo rank among the oldest continuously inhabited cities. Syria became independent from French mandate rule in 1946.
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Tajikistan
Tajikistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia, bordered by Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China and Afghanistan. The Pamir Mountains cover much of its east, and its official language, Tajik, is a variety of Persian written in Cyrillic script.
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Tanzania
Capital is Dodoma, not the larger Dar es Salaam, which still hosts most government and embassy functions day to day. Tanzania is home to Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest peak at 5,895 meters and one of the Seven Summits.
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Thailand
The only country in Southeast Asia never colonized by a European power: its name means "land of the free." Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, rises on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, its central prang encrusted with porcelain and seashell mosaics.
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Timor-Leste
Timor-Leste, also called East Timor, covers the eastern half of the island of Timor plus the enclave of Oecusse in the west. A Portuguese colony for centuries, then occupied by Indonesia, it restored its independence in 2002.
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Togo
Togo is a narrow West African country squeezed between Ghana and Benin, running from a short Atlantic coastline north to Burkina Faso. Once part of German Togoland and later governed by France, it became independent in 1960.
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Tonga
Tonga is a Polynesian kingdom of about 170 islands in the South Pacific, 45 of them inhabited. It was a British protectorate but never formally colonised, became fully independent in 1970, and is the last monarchy in the Pacific islands.
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Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago is a twin-island nation at the southern end of the Caribbean, just off the coast of Venezuela. Independent from Britain since 1962, it grew rich on oil and natural gas and gave the world the steelpan and calypso.
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Tunisia
Tunisia is the smallest country of the Maghreb, and its northern tip is the northernmost point of Africa. The ruins of Carthage, the Phoenician city that fought Rome for the Mediterranean, lie on the edge of Tunis, and in 2010 the Arab Spring began here.
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Turkey
The only country spanning two continents, split by the Bosphorus strait between Europe and Asia. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul opened as a cathedral in 537 CE, became a mosque in 1453, a museum in 1935, and a mosque again in 2020, nearly 1,500 years of continuous use.
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Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan is a Central Asian country on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, and the Karakum Desert covers most of its land. It became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, and the UN recognized its permanent neutrality in 1995.
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Tuvalu
Tuvalu is a Polynesian nation of nine low-lying islands in the South Pacific, with only about 26 square kilometres of land. Formerly the Ellice Islands, it became independent from Britain in 1978, and with most of its land only a few metres above the sea it is among the countries most exposed to rising sea levels.
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Uganda
Uganda straddles the equator in East Africa. The Nile leaves Lake Victoria at Jinja to begin its long journey north, while the forests of Bwindi in the southwest shelter about half of the world's mountain gorillas.
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Ukraine
One of the world's largest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, grown on chernozem, some of the most fertile soil on Earth. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and has occupied parts of the east and south since 2022; the map follows Ukraine's internationally recognised borders.
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United Arab Emirates
The capital is Abu Dhabi, not Dubai: a common mix-up, since Dubai's skyline is the more famous one. The United Arab Emirates formed in 1971 as a federation of seven emirates, turning oil wealth into one of the world's great trade and finance hubs within a generation.
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United Kingdom
One of very few countries with no single written constitution, built instead from centuries of statute, common law and convention. The United Kingdom is also where the Industrial Revolution began in the 1760s, and home to the pound sterling, the oldest currency still in continuous use.
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United States
The world's third-most populous country and its largest economy by GDP, spanning fifty states from the Atlantic to the Pacific plus Alaska and Hawaii. Founded in 1776 as thirteen former British colonies, its Constitution, ratified 1788, is the oldest still in continuous use for any nation.
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Uruguay
Uruguay is a small country on the Atlantic coast of South America, between Argentina and Brazil, where the River Plate meets the ocean. Independent since 1825, it hosted and won the first football World Cup in 1930, and it is known for a stable democracy and for raising far more cattle than it has people.
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Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world, ringed entirely by other landlocked states. It is Central Asia's most populous country, and its Silk Road cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva are UNESCO World Heritage sites.
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Vanuatu
Vanuatu is a Y-shaped chain of about 80 volcanic islands in the South Pacific, northeast of New Caledonia. Jointly ruled by Britain and France until independence in 1980, it has more languages per person than almost any other country.
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Vatican City
Vatican City is the smallest country in the world, a walled city-state of about half a square kilometre inside Rome. It became independent under the Lateran Treaty with Italy in 1929, and it is the home of the Pope, St Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.
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Venezuela
Venezuela is a country on South America's Caribbean coast, home to the Andes, the Orinoco and Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall. It holds the largest proven oil reserves on Earth, yet since 2014 a deep economic crisis has led millions of people to leave. The map shows the recognised border with Guyana, which Venezuela disputes.
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Vietnam
A country stretched into a thousand-mile S along the South China Sea, barely fifty kilometres wide at its narrowest point: from the karst islands of Ha Long Bay in the north to the Mekong Delta in the south, Vietnam is one of the most elongated nations on Earth, and among the fastest growing economies of the last three decades.
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Yemen
Yemen sits on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, facing the Horn of Africa across the narrow Bab el-Mandeb strait. Its territory includes the island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea. North and South Yemen unified in 1990, with Sanaa as the capital.
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Zambia
Zambia is a landlocked country in southern Africa with eight neighbours and its capital at Lusaka. Formerly Northern Rhodesia, it became independent from Britain in 1964. Copper mining has long driven its economy, and it shares Victoria Falls with Zimbabwe.
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Zimbabwe
A landlocked country named after Great Zimbabwe, a medieval stone city whose carved soapstone birds inspired the emblem on its flag. On the northern border the Zambezi River plunges over Victoria Falls, then fills Lake Kariba, both shared with Zambia.