Countries Visited Checklist: All 195, by Continent

This is a checklist of all 195 countries: the 193 member states of the United Nations and its two observer states, the Holy See (Vatican City) and Palestine. They are grouped by continent, in alphabetical order, with a box beside each.

There are three ways to use it:

• On paper. Print this page, which is laid out for paper with the menus left off, or use the one-page PDF.
• On screen. Tick the countries on the world map. It keeps the count and the percentage, saves in your browser, and turns the result into a poster. How to make a map of places you’ve visited walks through it in four steps.
• As a reference for how many countries each continent has.

How many countries are in each continent?

Africa has the most countries, 54. Of the inhabited continents, South America has the fewest, 12. Antarctica has none.

The checklist

Africa (54)

Asia (48)

Europe (44)

North America (23)

South America (12)

Oceania (14)

Territories and other areas (optional)

These 42 places are not among the 195, but they are on the map: nearly all have a code of their own in the international standard for country codes, and many travellers list them separately. Count them on a line of their own, as in “31 countries and 4 territories”. The small print names the state responsible for each.

What each of them is, and why Greenland, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong are not on the main list, is explained in Is Greenland a country?

Where the continents are drawn

The continents here follow the United Nations’ statistical regions, with the Americas split in two. That decides a few cases people argue about:

• Russia is under Europe. Kazakhstan, Türkiye, Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are under Asia.
• Egypt is under Africa.
• Central America and the Caribbean are under North America, which is why it has 23 countries.

Other lists draw these lines differently. That changes the count for a continent, never the total of 195.

Before you start ticking

Two decisions make your count mean something.

1. What counts as a visit. A layover, a night, a day trip across a border? There is no official rule, so pick one and keep to it. The options are in what counts as visiting a country.
2. Which list. This one has 195. Others have 193, 211 or 249, for reasons explained in how many countries there are.

When you have your number, turn it into a percentage: it is your count divided by 195.