Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦

Saudi Arabia is a sovereign country in Western Asia, in the wider region of Asia. In formal use it is Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is the capital.

Around 35.3 million people live there, placing it 45th of 250 by population — between Malaysia above it and Mozambique below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 1st of 17 in size and 4th in population.

By land area it covers 2,149,690 km², which ranks it 14th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Greenland and just ahead of Mexico. For scale, it is a fraction smaller than DR Congo.

Its reference point sits at 25.0° north and 45.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,783 km from the equator, in what geographers would call subtropical latitudes.

The Tropic of Cancer runs through or very close to it. Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Mexico, Western Sahara and Bangladesh.

7 countries share a land border with it: Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The largest of them by area is Yemen, while the most populous is Iraq. Together those neighbours hold about 122.2 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 16 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.

Arabic is the only official language. Arabic is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 24 other entries including Algeria, Bahrain, Chad and the Comoros.

Someone from Saudi Arabia is a Saudi Arabian.

Inside Asia it places 19th of 50 by population, and it accounts for 11% of everyone living in Western Asia.

Zoom in from the world to Western Asia and Saudi Arabia sits 4th of 17 by population and 1st by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Yemen just above and Syria just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇾🇪 Yemen
• 🇸🇾 Syria
• 🇹🇷 Türkiye

The Saudi riyal (SAR) is used only in Saudi Arabia 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. Arabic is listed for 25 entries here, Saudi Arabia 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.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Saudi Arabia ranks 14th of 250 by area and 45th by population. That works out at 1.4% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.43% 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 Saudi Arabia in the size ordering are Greenland at 2,166,086 km² and Mexico at 1,964,375 km², against Saudi Arabia's 2,149,690 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Saudi Arabia averages 16 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 217th 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.

Money there is the Saudi riyal (ر.س, SAR). It shares that currency with.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Saudi Arabia, the answer is Riyadh.

Websites there use the .sa domain. Calls from overseas start with +966. Standard country codes: sa and SAU.

Saudi Arabia is one of the 193 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.