Nicaragua 🇳🇮

Nicaragua is a sovereign country in Central America, in the wider region of the Americas. In formal use it is Republic of Nicaragua. Managua is the capital.

Around 6.9 million people live there, placing it 109th of 250 by population — between Paraguay above it and Serbia below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 1st of 7 in size and 3rd in population.

By land area it covers 130,373 km², which ranks it 99th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Greece and just ahead of North Korea. For scale, it is almost exactly the same size as Greece.

Its reference point sits at 13.0° north and 85.0° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,447 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Sudan, Chad and Yemen.

2 countries share a land border with it: Costa Rica and Honduras. The largest of them by area is Honduras, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 16.0 million people.

Unlike its landlocked neighbours it reaches the sea directly, while also sharing land frontiers.

Spread across 130,373 km², that works out at about 53 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

People from Nicaragua are called Nicaraguans.

Spanish is the only official language. Spanish is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 23 other entries including Argentina, Belize, Bolivia and Chile.

Inside the Americas it places 18th of 56 by population, and it accounts for 13% of everyone living in Central America.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Nicaragua ranks 99th of 250 by area and 109th by population. That works out at 0.087% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.085% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Nicaragua in the size ordering are Greece at 131,990 km² and North Korea at 120,538 km², against Nicaragua's 130,373 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Nicaragua averages 53 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 164th of the 248 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Zoom in from the world to Central America and Nicaragua sits 3rd of 7 by population and 1st by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Honduras just above and El Salvador just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Guatemala is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Central America has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇭🇳 Honduras
• 🇸🇻 El Salvador
• 🇬🇹 Guatemala

The Nicaraguan córdoba (NIO) is used only in Nicaragua among the 250 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Spanish is listed for 24 entries here, Nicaragua among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

It uses the Nicaraguan córdoba (C$, NIO). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Nicaragua.

The top-level domain is .ni. Calls from overseas start with +505. Its ISO codes are ni and NIC, which is what most databases and flag files use.

Managua is the city to remember for this country.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 193 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.