Geography by the numbers: the largest, smallest, most populous, and most surprising countries

Most lists of "world records" are deeply boring — Mount Everest is the highest mountain, the Amazon carries the most water, etc. The interesting numbers in geography are the ones that surprise you: countries that are bigger than you'd guess, populations that don't match what the maps suggest, and a few wild outliers where the entire concept of a country is being stretched. This article is a tour of those.

The size league

The biggest country in the world by land area is, unambiguously, Russia — about 17.1 million square kilometres, roughly twice the size of the next country on the list. To put this in perspective, Russia is bigger than Pluto. The eastern third (Siberia) is so sparsely populated that the entire region's population fits comfortably inside the country's western quarter.

The next four are Canada (~10.0 million km²), the United States (~9.8 million km², or ~9.4 million if you exclude inland water), China (~9.6 million km²), and Brazil (~8.5 million km²). The exact ranking of the US and China shifts depending on whose measurement you use, but they're statistically tied. After Brazil come Australia (~7.7 million km²), India (~3.3 million km²), Argentina (~2.8 million km²), Kazakhstan (~2.7 million km²), and Algeria (~2.4 million km²) to round out the top ten.

The Kazakhstan number is the one that surprises most people. Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country, and it's larger than the entirety of Western Europe. Its population is only about 20 million, so the population density is roughly 7 people per km² — comparable to Mongolia or the empty parts of Australia.

At the other end of the scale, the smallest country in the world is Vatican City at 0.49 km² — smaller than many city parks. Its population is roughly 825 (though the exact number depends on who you count). After Vatican City come Monaco (~2 km², ~36,000 people), Nauru (~21 km², ~12,000 people), Tuvalu (~26 km², ~11,000 people), and San Marino (~61 km², ~33,000 people). All five are routine quiz-mode pitfalls because they're easy to forget on a quick scan of the world map.

The population league

The population rankings have shifted recently. In 2023, India officially overtook China to become the world's most populous country. India is now at roughly 1.43 billion, China at roughly 1.41 billion. Both are essentially tied within the margin of measurement error, but the trend is clear: India's population is still growing while China's is now slowly shrinking.

Below the two giants, the rankings drop sharply. The United States is third at roughly 335 million (less than a quarter of either of the top two). Indonesia is fourth at ~280 million, Pakistan fifth at ~245 million, Nigeria sixth at ~225 million, Brazil seventh at ~217 million, Bangladesh eighth at ~170 million, Russia ninth at ~144 million, and Mexico tenth at ~129 million. Of these, Bangladesh is the surprise: it's roughly the size of England plus Scotland, but with three times the population.

The least-populated countries are dominated by Pacific island nations. Tuvalu (~11,000), Nauru (~12,000), and Palau (~18,000) are at the bottom — all three would fit comfortably inside a single university's student population. Vatican City is technically lower (~825) but is usually treated as a special case rather than a "real" country in these rankings.

The density extremes

Density rankings get distorted by city-states and microstates, so most lists separate them. Among the city-states: Monaco has the highest density of any sovereign nation at ~26,000 people per km² (Manhattan-level), followed by Singapore at ~8,400. Hong Kong (which is not a sovereign nation, but often listed) is around 6,700.

Excluding city-states, the densest country is usually Bangladesh at ~1,260 people per km² — and Bangladesh is not a small country. It has the population of Russia in the area of Greece. The next densest are Lebanon (~640), the Netherlands (~520), and South Korea (~530). These four are the most-populated-not-tiny countries in the world.

At the empty end, Mongolia has the lowest density of any country with a meaningful population — about 2.2 people per km². Namibia (~3.0), Australia (~3.5), Iceland (~3.7), and Suriname (~3.7) are the others under 4. Most of these countries have one or two cities and then enormous empty interiors.

Coastline, mountains, and the disputed measurements

Coastline length is one of the most-cited and least-trustworthy geographical statistics, because of what's called the coastline paradox : the more precisely you measure a coastline, the longer it gets. Benoit Mandelbrot wrote the famous paper on this in 1967. As a result, official figures for coastline length vary wildly depending on the resolution of the maps used. By most measurements, Canada has the longest coastline in the world, at over 200,000 km — roughly five times the circumference of the Earth — because of the fractal complexity of its Arctic islands and inlets. Indonesia is usually listed second, with the much smaller and more measurable Norway (because of its fjords) and Russia (because of its Arctic coast) close behind.

The most-mountainous countries by mean elevation are Bhutan (mean elevation ~3,280 m), Tajikistan (~3,186 m), and Kyrgyzstan (~2,750 m). The flattest country (excluding Vatican City and Monaco, which are tiny) is the Maldives — most of the country sits less than 1.5 metres above sea level, which is the central reason for the country's existential climate-change concerns. The Netherlands, despite the famous flat-and-below-sea-level reputation, has a mean elevation of about 30 m, which puts it near the middle of the global ranking.

Landlocked, doubly landlocked, and the islanders

There are 44 landlocked countries in the world. Two of them are doubly landlocked — meaning they're landlocked and all of their neighbours are also landlocked. The two are Liechtenstein (surrounded by Austria and Switzerland, both landlocked) and Uzbekistan (surrounded by five other 'stans, none of which has a coast). Doubly-landlocked is one of those geographical facts that becomes more interesting the longer you stare at it: from anywhere in Liechtenstein, the nearest sea is at least two countries away.

The other extreme is countries that are entirely composed of islands. Indonesia has the most — over 17,000, of which roughly 6,000 are inhabited. The Philippines has over 7,600. Japan has roughly 6,800. After these three, the count drops sharply. Mid-Pacific island nations like Kiribati and the Marshall Islands have only a few dozen inhabitable islands each, but those islands are spread over enormous oceanic territory: Kiribati's exclusive economic zone covers about 3.5 million km² of ocean — bigger than India.

Countries you've probably never heard of

Even with 195 widely-recognised countries, there are a handful that surprise people who think they know the world map. These are the ones that consistently come up as "wait, that's a country?" on hard-mode quizzes:

• São Tomé and Príncipe. A two-island nation in the Gulf of Guinea, off the west coast of Africa. Population ~225,000, area ~960 km², former Portuguese colony. Cocoa-based economy. Most people, asked to point to it, will guess somewhere in the Caribbean.
• Comoros. A four-island archipelago in the Mozambique Channel, between Mozambique and Madagascar. Population ~870,000. Has had over 20 coup attempts since independence in 1975, more than any other country.
• Eswatini. Formerly known as Swaziland; renamed in 2018 by the king on the 50th anniversary of independence. A small landlocked monarchy almost entirely surrounded by South Africa, with a small border with Mozambique. Population ~1.2 million.
• Kiribati. Pronounced "Kiri-bass" (the 'ti' is silent). 33 atolls and reef islands spread across all four hemispheres in the central Pacific. The country straddles the equator and the international date line, which makes it the first country to enter each new day.
• Suriname. A small country on the northern coast of South America, between French Guiana and Guyana. Former Dutch colony, and Dutch is still the official language. Population ~620,000. About 90% of the country is rainforest.
• Bhutan. A landlocked Himalayan kingdom between India and China. Famously measures Gross National Happiness in addition to GDP. Population ~780,000. Did not allow television in the country until 1999.

Why these numbers matter (a little)

Most of these statistics are trivia, and they don't really change how you'd play the quizzes on this site. But the numbers do change how you read the world: realising that India and China together hold roughly 36% of the human population, that Russia is twice the size of any other country, that the world's most-densely-populated non-city-state is Bangladesh, and that there are 44 landlocked countries — these facts shift your mental model from "a list of 195" to a structured picture where some countries dominate by sheer mass and others survive in the gaps.

If you've played any of the quizzes on this site at hard difficulty, you'll recognise about half the countries in the "never heard of" list above as the ones that catch you out. They're disproportionately Pacific island nations, small African states, and former Iron Curtain countries that have only existed in their current form since the 1990s. Spending five minutes with the Discover page on each of those — just looking at where they are on the map and reading the flag — turns hard-mode 5/10 scores into 8/10 ones.