Countries in Europe

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.