How Many Countries Are There? Why Travel Maps Disagree

There are 195 countries by the most widely used count: the 193 member states of the United Nations, plus the Holy See and the State of Palestine, which the UN lists as non-member states with permanent observer status.

That is the number WorldTripMap uses. It is not the only defensible one, which is why two travel apps can give the same person two different totals.

The main counts, and where they come from

None of these is wrong. They answer different questions. The UN counts states that other states have admitted as members. ISO assigns codes to anything that needs one for trade or post, including uninhabited islands. The Travelers’ Century Club deliberately splits places that feel like separate destinations, such as Alaska and Hawaii.

Why the number is contested at all

A few places are the reason a single answer is hard:

• Kosovo and Taiwan govern themselves and are recognized by some UN members but are not UN members.
• Territories such as Greenland, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and French Polynesia have their own identity, and often their own passport stamps, but belong to another state.
• The United Kingdom is one UN member that contains four countries by its own description.

A travel map has to make a choice about each of them. What matters is that the choice is stated. What each of these places is, with the sources, is in Is Greenland a country?

How WorldTripMap counts

• The headline number is out of 195: 193 UN members plus the Holy See and Palestine.
• You can also mark 42 territories and other areas, including Greenland, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Taiwan and Kosovo. They are counted separately and shown as “plus 3 territories”, so the main figure always means the same thing.
• Continents follow the UN’s statistical regions, with the Americas split into North and South. That places Russia in Europe, and Türkiye, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in Asia.
• Your percentage is your count divided by 195. It is a share of countries, not of the world’s land or its people.

The full rules and data sources are on the data and methods page.

What counts as “visiting” a country?

No authority defines this, so set a rule and keep to it. The usual choices run from “you set foot there”, which counts an airport transfer, through “you left the airport” and “you spent a night”, to “you did something you would tell a friend about”. Whichever you choose, apply it to every country, and your number will mean something to you. The rules two travellers’ clubs publish, and where they disagree, are in what counts as visiting a country.

A quick way to get your own number

Open the world map, tick the countries you have explored in the list (it is quicker than hunting for small ones on the map), and read the count at the top. If a friend uses a different app, expect a different total, and now you know why.

Prefer paper? The countries checklist has all 195 by continent on one page. And once you have a count, what percentage of the world you have visited is one division away.