WHERE ARE YOU
THINKING OF?

Forty-three of the world's 193 United Nations member states are landlocked countries, with no sea coast at all, or 44 if you count the Holy See, which is not a member. That is a little under a quarter of the world, and it is one of a very small number of facts that genuinely separate one country from another.

Most things you know about a country turn out to be useless for telling it apart from the rest. Its flag has red in it, its people drink coffee, it has mountains. The facts that do the work are the ones the United Nations bothers to keep lists of, because those are the ones that carve the world into pieces of a usable size: landlocked countries, island states, and which of five regions a place sits in, with Antarctica off on its own.

Key Takeaways

• The UN's statistical office flags 32 landlocked developing countries. Add the eleven landlocked UN members in Europe that the category excludes, and 43 of 193 member states have no sea coast.
• The law is blunt about what this means. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea says a "land-locked State" is simply "a State which has no sea-coast", and then grants it a right of transit through its neighbours.
• Region is the single strongest clue. The UN's own country list runs to 248 countries and areas; counting its rows by region gives Africa 60, Americas 57, Europe 51, Asia 50, Oceania 29, and Antarctica on its own.
• The UN's list carries 39 Small Island Developing States, grouped in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and South China Sea.
• Hemisphere sounds like a clean half and is not, because the world's countries are nowhere near evenly spread north and south.

How many landlocked countries are there?

Forty-three, among UN member states, and the number takes two steps to reach because nobody publishes it as one figure.

The United Nations Statistics Division maintains the standard country list used across UN publications, known as M49. It tags each country with the special categories the UN reports on, and one of those is Landlocked Developing Countries. Thirty-two countries carry that tag: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Mongolia, Nepal, Niger, North Macedonia, Paraguay, the Republic of Moldova, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

That category is about development, not geography. So it deliberately leaves out the wealthy landlocked states. All eleven of those that are UN members are in Europe: Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Czechia, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia and Switzerland. Thirty-two plus eleven is 43. Add the Holy See, a landlocked state with observer status rather than membership, and the widely quoted total of 44 appears.

Which is why the question is a good one to ask and a poor one to ask first. A no leaves 150 countries still standing. A yes cuts the field by more than three quarters in a single move, which is the same reason guess the country opens on broad geography rather than on a name.

Why landlocked countries have a legal right to the sea

Because being landlocked is a legal status as well as a geographical one, and the definition is refreshingly free of hedging.

Part X of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea deals with the problem directly. Article 124 sets out the terms: a "land-locked State" means "a State which has no sea-coast", and a "transit State" is one "situated between a land-locked State and the sea, through whose territory traffic in transit passes".

Article 125 then gives the landlocked state something real. "Land-locked States shall have the right of access to and from the sea," it says, and "shall enjoy freedom of transit through the territory of transit States by all means of transport." The terms are left to be agreed between the countries concerned, and transit states keep "full sovereignty over their territory", so the right is genuine but negotiated.

The distances involved explain why anyone bothered to write it down. The UN office responsible for landlocked developing countries points out that Kazakhstan lies about 3,750 km from the nearest sea, with Afghanistan, Chad, Niger, Zambia and Zimbabwe all more than 2,000 km out.

Which region a country is in tells you the most

Region is the strongest single fact you can learn, because it is the only one that splits the world into pieces that are all roughly usable.

The UN's country list covers 248 countries and areas, which is more than the 193 members because it includes territories, dependencies and Antarctica. The UN does not publish a summary count by region, so the table below was counted from its own table rather than taken from a published total.

Region	Countries and areas
Africa	60
Americas	57
Europe	51
Asia	50
Oceania	29
Antarctica	1
Total	248

Four of those five regions land within ten entries of each other, and only Oceania falls well short. No other single geographic fact divides the world this evenly. The UN attaches a careful disclaimer to the whole scheme, worth quoting because it is the reason the categories look odd in places: "The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations."

Drop one level to the sub-regions, counted the same way, and the lumpiness shows. Sub-Saharan Africa alone holds 53 entries and Latin America and the Caribbean holds 52, while Northern America holds 5 and Central Asia holds 5. The country factsheets give each one's region and coastline. Asking "is it in Central Asia?" is a wasted turn almost every time. Asking "is it in Africa or the Americas?" is not.

How many small island states are there?

Thirty-nine on the UN's list, though there is no official count of island countries as such, and the UN's grouping is not one.

The UN recognises a category called Small Island Developing States, which it describes as "a distinct group of 39 States and 18 Associate Members of United Nations regional commissions". They sit in three regions: the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

That grouping is not the same as "every country that happens to be an island". It excludes Japan, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Madagascar and New Zealand, and it includes several mainland coastal states, among them Belize, Guyana, Suriname and Guinea-Bissau. What it does capture is the useful thing about island status as a clue: islands are concentrated. Learning that a country is a small island state does not just remove the mainland, it drops you into one of three fairly small oceanic neighbourhoods.

Why hemisphere is a worse question than it sounds

Because it promises a half and delivers nothing like one.

Northern or southern feels like the perfect opening question, since a hemisphere is by definition half the planet. But the countries are not spread evenly across those halves. Every one of the 51 entries in Europe and all 5 in Northern America sit north of the equator, along with all of Northern Africa and nearly all of Central, Eastern, Southern and Western Asia. The southern half gets most of Oceania, most of South America, southern Africa, and not much else.

So the answer "yes, northern" barely narrows anything, while "no, southern" is unusually informative. That asymmetry is the general shape of geographic questions, and it is why the ones that feel decisive often are not. A question is only worth a turn if you genuinely cannot predict the answer.

Compare that with the equator itself, which passes through only a handful of countries, and you have a rule of thumb: the more of the world's land a category covers, the less a yes tells you.

How many countries are there to choose from?

It depends who is counting, and the disagreement is not sloppiness.

The United Nations has 193 member states. It started with 51 in 1945, and the most recent addition was South Sudan, which "became an independent State and was admitted as a Member of the United Nations" on 9 July 2011. Two more, the Holy See and the State of Palestine, hold non-member observer status, which is where the frequently seen figure of 195 comes from. Two more again, Kosovo and Taiwan, are recognised by some governments and not others, which is where the commonly quoted figure of 197 comes from.

The UN's own statistical list, meanwhile, runs to 248 entries, because statisticians need somewhere to put Greenland, Bermuda, Western Sahara and Antarctica. Atlases and quiz sets tend to land somewhere in between, which is why two perfectly honest sources can give you different totals for the same planet.

For a guessing game the practical consequence is small but real: the field you are searching is around 200 items, not 20 and not 2,000. That is a small enough world that a handful of well-chosen facts will find anything in it.

If you would rather narrow down something with no borders at all, What Are You Thinking Of? runs on the same instinct. The rest of the guessing games live on the quizzes hub.

Frequently asked questions

How many landlocked countries are there in the world?

Forty-three of the 193 United Nations member states have no sea coast, or 44 counting the Holy See, which is an observer rather than a member. The UN's statistical standard tags 32 of them as Landlocked Developing Countries; the remaining eleven member states, all in Europe, fall outside that development category but are just as landlocked.

What is the legal definition of a landlocked country?

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea gives it in one line: a "land-locked State" means "a State which has no sea-coast". The Convention then treats that as a disadvantage to be remedied rather than a mere fact, granting landlocked states a right of access to and from the sea and freedom of transit through neighbouring countries, on terms the countries agree between themselves.

Which continent has the most countries?

Africa, on the United Nations classification, with 60 of the 248 countries and areas on the UN's standard list. The Americas follow with 57, then Europe with 51, Asia with 50 and Oceania with 29. Antarctica sits in a category by itself. The UN publishes the country list but no summary count by region, so these totals are counted from its table. They also include territories and dependencies, so they run higher than a count of sovereign states alone.

How many island countries are there?

There is no official count of island countries. The closest figure the UN publishes is 39 Small Island Developing States, together with 18 associate members of its regional commissions, spread across the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and South China Sea region. That is a development grouping rather than a list of islands: it leaves out Japan, Iceland and New Zealand, and it includes mainland coastal states such as Belize and Guyana.

Are there 193, 195 or 197 countries?

All three figures are defensible, which is why they all circulate. The United Nations has 193 member states. Adding the two non-member observer states, the Holy See and the State of Palestine, gives 195. Two more, Kosovo and Taiwan, are recognised by some governments and not others, which is where the commonly quoted 197 comes from. Higher counts again bring in territories with a degree of self-government, and the UN's own statistical list of countries and areas runs all the way to 248.

Sources

• United Nations, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Part X, Articles 124 and 125 - retrieved 10 August 2026, official treaty text (PDF)
• United Nations Statistics Division, Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (M49), region and special-category tables - retrieved 10 August 2026, standard and country tables
• UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, About Landlocked Developing Countries - retrieved 10 August 2026, category page at un.org
• UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, About Small Island Developing States - retrieved 10 August 2026, category page at un.org
• United Nations, Growth in United Nations Membership - retrieved 10 August 2026, membership history at un.org