Countries in Americas

There are 34 sovereign countries in the Americas. This page lists 55 entries because it also covers territories such as Puerto Rico, Greenland, Bermuda, Martinique and the Falkland Islands. Split by continent, that is 12 sovereign states in South America, 3 in North America, 7 in Central America and 13 in the Caribbean.

Canada, at 9,984,670 km², which also makes it the second-largest country in the world after Russia. The United States is a close second in the region and Brazil a close third. Despite its size, Canada has only 41.3 million residents, most of them within a hundred miles of the southern border.

Only 2: Bolivia and Paraguay, both in the interior of South America. Bolivia lost its Pacific coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific in 1884 and has never accepted the loss — it still maintains a navy on Lake Titicaca and marks a national Day of the Sea every March. Paraguay reaches the sea through the Paraná river system.

28 of the 55 entries on this page are Caribbean, which is exactly half. Thirteen are independent sovereign states and the rest are territories of the United States, the United Kingdom, France or the Netherlands. It is the most politically fragmented part of the Americas by a wide margin.

Saint Kitts and Nevis, at 261 km² with about 46,800 residents, is the smallest sovereign state in the Americas and the smallest in the Western Hemisphere. The smallest entry of any kind on this page is Saint Barthélemy at 21 km², a French overseas collectivity in the Lesser Antilles.

Geographically yes — Greenland sits on the North American tectonic plate and is closer to Canada than to Europe, which is why it appears in this region. Politically it is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. At 2,166,086 km² it is the world's largest island and larger than every country in the Americas except Canada, the United States, Brazil and Argentina, yet fewer than sixty thousand people live there.

This wheel is loaded only with countries from this region, so every spin lands inside it. The wheel on the main spin page draws twelve at a time from every country and territory 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.