World Map Quiz: Find the Countries of the World

How to play the world map quiz

The map shows the whole world except Antarctica on the Equal Earth projection, so every country is drawn at its true relative size. Territories such as Greenland, Puerto Rico and French Polynesia are gray.

• Click the map. The quiz names a country ("Click Kazakhstan") and you click it. A wrong click tells you what you hit, so you learn a country either way.
• Type the name. One country lights up, and you type its name. Spelling is forgiving, accents are optional, and common alternate names work: "Ivory Coast," "Burma," "Czech Republic," "Swaziland," "Turkey" and "Holland" are all accepted.
• Multiple choice. Pick the highlighted country from four names, usually neighbors.
• Drag labels. Drag every name onto the map, or tap a name and then the country. This is the slowest and most thorough way to learn the world.

Practice is untimed and brings missed countries back. The Quiz is timed, with three tries per country, and scores first tries. Challenge is 60 seconds of streaks; each five in a row multiplies your points.

Small countries and how to find them

About 40 countries are tiny at world scale. The default round leaves them out so the quiz is about geography, not precise clicking. Turn on Small countries to play all 197. Then:

• Island nations such as the Maldives, Nauru and Barbados have a wide invisible tap target around them, so a tap nearby counts.
• Europe's microstates (Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Andorra and Luxembourg) appear enlarged in a magnifier circle in the Atlantic.
• The eastern Caribbean islands are enlarged in a second magnifier.
• Zoom with the + button, a pinch, or Ctrl and the scroll wheel, then drag to pan.

If you'd rather learn the small countries in context, the region quizzes draw them much larger: the Europe map quiz, Caribbean map quiz and Oceania map quiz.

How many countries are there?

It depends on who's counting. The United Nations has 193 member states, plus two permanent observer states, Vatican City and Palestine. Two more places govern themselves and appear as countries in most atlases: Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and is recognized by roughly half of UN members, and Taiwan, which has governed itself since 1949 but is claimed by China. That gives the 197 in this quiz.

Why the map looks different from the one on your wall

Every flat map of the round Earth distorts something. The Mercator projection, from 1569, keeps shapes and directions accurate for sailors, but it stretches areas toward the poles, so Greenland, Canada and Russia look far bigger than they are. On a Mercator map Greenland looks about the size of Africa; Africa is actually about 14 times larger.

This quiz uses Equal Earth, a projection published in 2018 that keeps every country's area correct while keeping shapes recognizable. It's a better map for learning how big countries really are. Some sizes surprise people: Brazil is bigger than the 48 contiguous US states, Indonesia is wider than the continental United States, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is bigger than Western Europe.

A plan for learning every country

1. Learn the continents and oceans first. The continents and oceans quiz is a five-minute warm-up that gives you the frame.
2. Go one continent at a time. Play the regional quizzes in this order, which builds from easiest to hardest for most people: South America, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania.
3. Come back to the world map. Play it with Small countries off. Anything you miss shows the region it's in on the results card.
4. Retry the misses daily. A few minutes of Retry missed each day beats an hour once a week.
5. Add capitals and flags. The world capitals quiz and the flag quiz use the same 197 countries.
6. Finish on paper. Print the blank world map printable and see how many countries you can label.

Names and borders that changed recently

The world map keeps changing, which is one reason old atlases and quizzes disagree. Recent changes this quiz follows:

• South Sudan became the world's newest widely recognized country in July 2011, when it separated from Sudan.
• Czechia became the official short name of the Czech Republic in 2016; both are accepted.
• Eswatini replaced the name Swaziland in 2018, and North Macedonia replaced Macedonia in 2019 after an agreement with Greece.
• Türkiye asked the United Nations to use that spelling instead of Turkey in 2022.
• Kazakhstan's capital went back to the name Astana in 2022, after three years as Nur-Sultan.
• Equatorial Guinea moved its capital from Malabo to Ciudad de la Paz in January 2026.
• Indonesia is building a new capital, Nusantara, but Jakarta is still the official capital as of October 2026.

Typed answers accept the older names, so a child with an older atlas isn't marked wrong for knowing "Swaziland" or "Burma."

How we draw borders

The map is built from Natural Earth's public-domain country boundaries, which show the borders countries control on the ground. Where a border is disputed, the map follows the convention most school atlases use and doesn't take a side; the FAQ above lists the main cases. If you find a border or name that looks wrong, it may simply be a different convention from your atlas, and both are usually defensible.

Keep learning

Families who want more than a quiz often add a geography subscription or a history program that travels the world one country at a time. The programs below are popular choices, and many scholarship and ESA-style programs on Edulist may cover curriculum like them.