Countries in the World

This is a list of the world’s countries and their dependencies, ranked by total area, including land and water. This list includes entries that are not limited to those in the ISO 3166-1 standard, which covers sovereign states and dependent territories. All 193 member states of the United Nations plus the two observer states are given a rank number. Largely unrecognised states not in ISO 3166-1 are included in the list in ranked order. The areas of such largely unrecognised states are in most cases also included in the areas of the more widely recognised states that claim the same territory; see the notes in the “Notes” column for each country for clarification. Countries in the World

Not included in the list are individual country claims to parts of the continent of Antarctica or entities such as the European Union that have some degree of sovereignty but do not consider themselves to be sovereign countries or dependent territories.

This list includes three measurements of area:

• Total area: the sum of land and water areas within international boundaries and coastlines.
• Land area: the aggregate of all land within international boundaries and coastlines, excluding water area.
• Water area: the sum of the surface areas of all inland water bodies (lakes, reservoirs, and rivers) within international boundaries and coastlines. Coastal internal waters may be included. Territorial seas are not included unless otherwise noted. Contiguous zones and exclusive economic zones are not included.

Total area is taken from the United Nations Statistics Division unless otherwise noted. Land and water are taken from the Food and Agriculture Organization unless otherwise noted. The CIA World Factbook is most often used when different UN departments disagree. Other sources and details for each entry may be specified in the relevant footnote.

There are 195 countries in the world today. This total comprises 193 countries that are member states of the United Nations and 2 countries that are non-member observer states: the Holy See and the State of Palestine.

Not in the list

Not included in this total count of 195 countries are:

• Taiwan – the United Nations considers it represented by the People’s Republic of China
• The Cook Islands and Niue, both states in free association with New Zealand which are members of several UN specialized agencies and have been recognized “full treaty-making capacity”, but are neither member states nor non-member observer states.
• Dependencies (or dependent territories, dependent areas, dependencies) and Areas of Special Sovereignty (autonomous territories)
• Other countries recognized by the United Nations as not being self-governing

Where are they located?

Of the 195 countries in the world:

• 54 countries are in Africa
• 48 in Asia
• 44 in Europe
• 33 in Latin America and the Caribbean
• 14 in Oceania
• 2 in Northern America

Flags

• Flags of all 195 countries in the world

Here is a List of Countries in the World

Below is the full table of countries ranked by the most populous and showing current population, share of world population, and land area:
See also: List with both countries and dependencies together | Alphabetical list of countries (includes dependencies)