Pick any of 250 countries and read back its ISO 3166 codes, calling code, capital, currencies, languages, land borders, area and name in two dozen languages.
How it works
Pick a country and the page reads back its ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, alpha-3 and numeric codes, Olympic code, internet domain and calling code, then its capital, region, area and coordinates, currencies, languages, native names and demonyms. There are 250 entries, territories and Antarctica among them, with badges for UN membership and independence. A field the data does not record is left out rather than shown empty.
The picker searches every name an entry has, not only the English label: the codes, the capital, the domain, native names and translations into 23 languages, with accents ignored. Allemagne, Deutschland, DEU and 276 all find Germany. A code typed in full ranks first and a name typed in full next, so Holland puts the Netherlands above the Caribbean Netherlands, whose Turkish name merely contains it.
The map draws the country with its land neighbours shaded, and clicking any country on it, or any of the border buttons, goes there. Its boundaries come from Natural Earth's 1:10m countries and everything else from the world-countries data set, both taken when the site was last built; the mark beside the title gives that date.
Natural Earth's default boundaries show who controls the ground. It also publishes the world as individual countries' law and conventions draw it, and the Point of view picker offers the 31 of those the site carries. The map opens on your own country's view if there is one, judged from your time zone and browser language, and the line under it says which view is drawn.
Examples
Germany, found by its French name
Typing Allemagne into the picker finds Germany:
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 DE
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 DEU
ISO 3166-1 numeric 276
Olympic (IOC) GER
Internet domain .de
Calling code +49
Capital Berlin
Area 357,114 km² (137,882.49 sq mi)Nine land borders follow as buttons, from Austria to Switzerland.
Taiwan from two points of view
In the default view Taiwan has its own boundary. With China as the point of view the map draws none, and the line under it reads:
No boundary of its own in that view: this land is inside the shape filed under China.Taiwan's own view does the reverse and files mainland China inside Taiwan. The codes and facts are the same whichever view is drawn.
Kosovo
Kosovo's codes read XK and UNK, labelled “Alpha-2, not ISO-assigned” and “Alpha-3, not ISO-assigned”, with the badge “Code is user assigned”, no numeric code, and “Not a UN member”. ISO 3166-1 assigns Kosovo no code: XK is in the range it leaves for users to assign, so it is used by agreement rather than issued by ISO, and UNK is the alpha-3 the world-countries data carries, where others write XKX.
Common problems
Two people see different borders
Because the map opens on the reader's own point of view, one country can be drawn differently for two people. Western Sahara is inside Morocco in Morocco's view and several others, the Falklands are inside Argentina in Argentina's, and Kosovo has no boundary of its own in more than a dozen views. Default shows the boundaries as held on the ground, and the page's link carries the view you chose.
The United Kingdom is GB
Its codes are GB and GBR, though its domain is .uk; UK is reserved in ISO 3166-1 rather than assigned. Typing UK into the picker still finds it first, since UK is one of its names typed in full and Ukraine's name only begins with those letters, but the code to write down is GB.
A calling code is not one country
The United States shows +1 and 380 dialling prefixes, the area codes of a plan it shares with Canada and much of the Caribbean. Russia and Kazakhstan share +7, and Jersey dials +44 like the United Kingdom. To find which country a number belongs to, parse it on the phone number page.
A name changed, the code did not
Eswatini is still SZ, Türkiye TR and North Macedonia MK, and the old names still find them. Codes do sometimes change, as Burma's BU became MM and Zaire's ZR became CD, and this page carries only the current ones.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between alpha-2, alpha-3 and numeric codes?
Alpha-2 is the two-letter code most software and country domains use, such as DE. Alpha-3 is a three-letter code that is easier to recognise, such as DEU. The numeric code, such as 276, matches the UN's M49 area codes and reads the same in any script.
How current is the data?
As current as the site's last build, whose date the mark beside the title gives. The boundaries come from a fixed Natural Earth release and the facts from the version of world-countries the site was built with, so a change made since then waits for a build that takes it in.
Why are Hong Kong and Macau among China's neighbours?
The data treats both as entries of their own, HK and MO, so China is listed with 16 land borders rather than the 14 usually counted between sovereign states.