Island Nations Quiz

All the world's island countries.

All the world's island countries — and there are far more of them than most people expect, concentrated in two oceans.

More than you think

Island nations are heavily underrepresented in most people's mental map, because a large number of them are small Pacific and Caribbean states that rarely feature in news or travel. There are around fifty, depending on how you count archipelagos and partially recognised states.

They cluster in four places: the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, with a handful elsewhere.

The Caribbean

Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share one island, Hispaniola — the only Caribbean island split between two sovereign states.

Dominica and the Dominican Republic are entirely different countries and get confused constantly.

The Pacific

Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, plus New Zealand.

Kiribati straddles both the Equator and the International Date Line, which makes it the only country in all four hemispheres.

Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world by area and one of the least visited places on Earth.

The Indian Ocean

Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros.

Madagascar is the fourth-largest island in the world and has flora and fauna found nowhere else, having separated from the mainland long enough ago for its species to diverge.

The Maldives is the lowest-lying country on Earth, with an average elevation of barely a metre and a half.

The Mediterranean and Europe

Iceland, Ireland, United Kingdom, Malta, Cyprus.

Cyprus is geographically closer to Asia but is usually grouped with Europe politically — one of several cases where continent assignment is a convention rather than a fact.

Elsewhere

Indonesia and the Philippines are both enormous archipelagos — Indonesia has thousands of islands and is by far the largest island nation by population. Japan and Taiwan are island states too, as are Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe off Africa, and Bahrain and Singapore in Asia.

The definitional edges

A few cases are genuinely debatable and quizzes handle them inconsistently:

Australia is usually classed as a continental landmass rather than an island nation, though it is surrounded by water.
The United Kingdom includes Northern Ireland, which shares an island with the Republic of Ireland.
Singapore is an island but is joined to Malaysia by causeways.

If a quiz disagrees with you on one of these, it is usually a definitional difference rather than an error.

Where to go next

Landlocked Countries is the mirror image. Doing both covers the two extremes of the same underlying map and reinforces each other. The Largest Islands in the World Quiz turns to the islands themselves, including the ones split between two or three countries. Some islands are not countries at all: the US Territories Quiz covers Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the rest.

Frequently asked questions

How many island countries are there?

Around fifty, depending on how archipelagos and edge cases like Australia are classified. They cluster in the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.

Which island is shared by two countries?

Hispaniola, split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic — the only Caribbean island divided between two sovereign states. Borneo is shared by three: Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

Which country is in all four hemispheres?

Kiribati. Its islands straddle both the Equator and the International Date Line, placing parts of the country in the northern, southern, eastern and western hemispheres simultaneously.

What is the lowest-lying country in the world?

The Maldives, with an average elevation of roughly a metre and a half above sea level. It is the flattest country on Earth and the most exposed to sea-level rise.

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