Paraguay 🇵🇾

Paraguay lies in South America, part of the Americas. Its full official name is Republic of Paraguay. Government sits in Asunción.

It covers 406,752 km², which ranks it 61st of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Iraq and just ahead of Zimbabwe. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is a little larger than Japan.

The population is about 6.9 million, placing it 108th of 250 by population — between Kyrgyzstan above it and Nicaragua below. Among the 14 entries in South America it ranks 8th by area and 9th by population.

Paraguay has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: Brazil and Argentina have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Paraguay's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Paraguay's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Paraguay's borders, Bolivia is landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇧🇷 Brazil
• 🇦🇷 Argentina

The coordinates the dataset gives are 23.0° S, 58.0° W, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 2,560 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

The Tropic of Capricorn passes across it. Namibia, Botswana and New Caledonia sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 3 neighbours: Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil. The largest of them by area is Brazil, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 270.1 million people.

This is one of the world's landlocked countries. That is true of 45 of the 250 entries here, so all seaborne trade runs through a neighbour's ports. One of its neighbours, Bolivia, is landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Paraguay ranks 61st of 250 by area and 108th by population. That works out at 0.27% 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 Paraguay in the size ordering are Iraq at 438,317 km² and Zimbabwe at 390,757 km², against Paraguay's 406,752 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Paraguay averages 17 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 214th 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.

Spread across 406,752 km², that works out at about 17 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 90 per square kilometre.

2 languages carry official status: Guaraní and Spanish. Guaraní, the first listed, is shared with 2 other entries worldwide.

The demonym is Paraguayan, so residents are Paraguayans.

Against the Americas as a whole it is the 17th most populous of 56 entries, and it accounts for 1.6% of everyone living in South America.

Zoom in from the world to South America and Paraguay sits 9th of 14 by population and 8th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Bolivia just above and Uruguay just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇧🇴 Bolivia
• 🇺🇾 Uruguay
• 🇧🇷 Brazil

The Paraguayan guaraní (PYG) is used only in Paraguay 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, Paraguay 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.

The currency is the Paraguayan guaraní (₲, PYG). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Paraguay, the answer is Asunción.

Its internet country code is .py. The international dialling code is +595. In ISO terms it is py in two letters and PRY in three.

As a sovereign state it is among the 193 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.