53 countries and territories, 744.3 million people, and the densest tangle of borders anywhere on Earth. Spin the wheel for a random European country, or browse the full list below.
12 countries are on the wheel right now.
Press Spin and the pointer decides where you are going.
Twelve of 53 countries are loaded at a time so every wedge stays readable. Shuffle for a fresh twelve, or spin the wheel you have.
53
Countries & territories
44
Sovereign states
744.3 million
Total population
9.2%
Share of world population
23,084,943 km²
Combined land area
15
Landlocked
9
No land border
49
Official languages
Every entry below opens a full guide with the capital, population, land area, languages, currency, neighbouring countries and a map. 44 of these 53 are sovereign states; the rest are territories, dependencies and overseas regions.
Mariehamn
30,500
Tirana
2.4 million
Andorra la Vella
81,938
Vienna
9.2 million
Minsk
9.1 million
Brussels
11.9 million
Sarajevo
3.2 million
Sofia
6.4 million
Zagreb
3.9 million
Nicosia
1.4 million
Prague
10.9 million
Copenhagen
6.0 million
Tallinn
1.4 million
Tórshavn
54,681
Helsinki
5.6 million
Paris
68.6 million
Berlin
83.5 million
Gibraltar
39,329
Athens
10.4 million
St. Peter Port
64,000
Budapest
9.6 million
Reykjavik
386,506
Dublin
5.4 million
Douglas
84,160
Rome
59.0 million
Saint Helier
103,000
Pristina
1.8 million
Riga
1.9 million
Vaduz
40,450
Vilnius
2.9 million
Luxembourg
677,012
Valletta
568,847
Chișinău
2.4 million
Monaco
38,631
Podgorica
623,525
Amsterdam
18.0 million
Skopje
1.8 million
Oslo
5.6 million
Warsaw
36.6 million
Lisbon
10.7 million
Bucharest
19.1 million
Moscow
143.5 million
City of San Marino
33,977
Belgrade
6.6 million
Bratislava
5.4 million
Ljubljana
2.1 million
Madrid
48.8 million
Longyearbyen
2,900
Stockholm
10.6 million
Bern
9.0 million
Kyiv
37.9 million
London
69.2 million
Vatican City
800
Europe holds 53 countries and territories and 744.3 million people, which is 9.2% of the world's population. What it lacks in size it makes up for in fragmentation: outside Russia, no European country reaches a million square kilometres, and several are small enough to walk across in a morning.
The area figure on this page needs a caveat. It comes to 23,084,943 km², but 17,098,242 km² of that is Russia, which this dataset files under Europe even though roughly three-quarters of Russian territory lies east of the Ural Mountains in Asia. Strip Russia out and Europe is a compact continent — smaller than Canada, and about the size of Australia plus India.
Density of borders is the defining European fact. 15 of the 53 entries here are landlocked, the highest proportion of any region, and a further 9 have no land border at all because they are islands. Everything in between is packed tightly enough that a single day's drive can cross three countries and three languages, which is exactly why the continent spent so much of its history at war with itself and so much of the last seventy years building institutions to stop that happening again.
Largest by area
17,098,242 km²
Smallest by area
0.44 km²
Most populous
143.5 million
Fewest people
800
Russia dominates both lists: largest by area at 17,098,242 km² and most populous at 143.5 million. After that the drop is severe. Ukraine is second largest at 603,500 km², less than four per cent of Russia's territory, and Germany is second most populous at 83.5 million.
The small end is where Europe gets genuinely unusual. Vatican City covers 0.44 km² with about 800 residents, making it the smallest state in the world by both measures. Monaco follows at roughly 2 km², San Marino at 61 km², Liechtenstein at 160 km². Four of the six smallest sovereign states on Earth are European; the other two, Nauru and Tuvalu, are in Oceania.
109.2 million people across 16 entries.
131.0 million people across 10 entries.
45.7 million people across 9 entries.
191.7 million people across 8 entries.
73.8 million people across 6 entries.
192.9 million people across 4 entries.
Six subregions, and the largest by count is Northern Europe with 16 entries — a figure inflated by the Nordic and British island territories such as the Faroes, Åland, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Svalbard. Southern Europe has 10, Southeast Europe 9, Western Europe 8, Central Europe 6 and Eastern Europe just 4.
Southeast Europe holds the youngest political map on the continent. Six of its 9 entries — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — did not exist in their present form in 1990. Yugoslavia broke into seven states over the two decades that followed, and the process only finished in 2008 with Kosovo's declaration of independence, which a substantial number of countries still decline to recognise. Add the split of Czechoslovakia in 1993 and a sizeable share of the European map learned at school before 1991 has since been redrawn.
49 distinct official languages recorded across Europe.
24 distinct currencies in circulation across Europe.
Europe records 49 official languages, more than any other region in this dataset, on the smallest inhabited landmass of the six. That density is the whole reason the European Union runs one of the largest translation operations in the world. The most widely shared are French, official in 7 entries, and English in 7 — both figures boosted by small territories rather than large states.
Currency runs in the exact opposite direction. Europe uses only 24 distinct currencies across its 53 entries — against 49 in Africa and 50 in Asia — because 28 of them use the euro. Several of those use it without being members of the eurozone at all — Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City, Montenegro and Kosovo have adopted it unilaterally or by agreement. After the euro, the British pound is the most widely used, appearing in 4 entries once the Crown Dependencies are counted.
Every region has its own page built the same way, so the figures line up and you can put them side by side. The count beside each name is how many countries and territories it holds.
If you would rather not pick a region at all, the global country wheel carries all 249 entries on the site, and the full A–Z index lets you search rather than spin. The continents overview compares all six regions on one screen.
Once you know the map, test it. The capital city quiz can be filtered by region, guess the flag strips out the country names entirely, and the landlocked countries page covers the 15entries here with no coastline alongside the rest of the world's. There are longer write-ups on the blog if you want the background behind the numbers.
Most references say 44 or 50, and this page lists 53 entries of which 44 are sovereign states. The spread of answers comes down to three arguments: whether to count Russia and Turkey, which straddle Europe and Asia; whether to count Kosovo, which is not universally recognised; and whether to count Crown Dependencies and island territories such as Jersey, the Faroe Islands and Gibraltar. This page includes all of them and labels each one honestly.
Vatican City, at 0.44 km² with roughly 800 residents. It is also the smallest country in the world by both land area and population. Monaco is second at about 2 km², then San Marino at 61 km² and Liechtenstein at 160 km². All four are European, which is why "smallest country" trivia so often has a European answer.
15 of the entries on this page: Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Czechia, Hungary, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Moldova, North Macedonia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland and Vatican City. That is the highest proportion of any region on the site. Liechtenstein is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world — every one of its neighbours is landlocked too.
28 of the 53 entries on this page use the euro as their currency, which is far more than the number of formal eurozone members. Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City use it under monetary agreements with the EU, while Montenegro and Kosovo adopted it unilaterally. Several French overseas territories in Europe use it as well.
Both, and this site files it under Europe. About three-quarters of Russian territory lies east of the Ural Mountains in Asia, but roughly three-quarters of Russians live west of them, and Moscow and Saint Petersburg are both European cities. Its 17,098,242 km² makes it the largest country in the world and it single-handedly accounts for most of the land area credited to Europe on this page.
Russia, at 143.5 million, followed by Germany at 83.5 million. If Russia is excluded on the grounds that most of its land is Asian, Germany leads, with the United Kingdom and France close behind and Italy fourth. Europe's population is close to flat overall and falling in a majority of its countries.
This wheel is loaded only with countries from this region, so every spin lands inside it. The wheel on the main spin page carries all 250 countries and territories on the site. Use the regional wheel when you are studying one part of the world and the global one when you want a genuine surprise.
They come from the same dataset that powers every country guide on this site, built on public country data and the most recent published estimates for population and land area. Population figures in particular are estimates and move constantly, so treat them as accurate to within a percent or two rather than to the last person.
Because they are real places with flags, capitals and residents, and leaving them out would hide some of the most interesting entries on the map. Every guide states plainly whether a place is a sovereign state or a territory, and the sovereign count is given separately in the statistics above so you can use whichever number you need.
Yes, and it is worth citing the date you looked them up, because population estimates change. If your project needs one authoritative source, cross-check the headline numbers against the UN World Population Prospects or the country's own statistics office. The rankings here — largest, smallest, most populous — are stable and safe to quote.