An island country (or island nation) is a sovereign state whose territory is entirely one or more islands, with no land border. There are about 47 of them, which is close to a quarter of all UN members. They range from Indonesia, the fourth most populous country on Earth, to Nauru, which has fewer than 12,000 people.
Atlantic and Caribbean
United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, Cape Verde, and the Caribbean states: Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (which share Hispaniola and so do have a land border with each other), the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and the smaller Eastern Caribbean nations — Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Mediterranean
Cyprus and Malta are the two island states of the Mediterranean.
Indian Ocean
Madagascar, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Mauritius, the Seychelles, and the Comoros.
Pacific
Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan (in the west), and the small states of the open ocean: Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau. New Zealand rounds out the south-west Pacific.
Edge cases
- Australia is usually called a continent rather than an island country, though it fits the definition of having no land border.
- The United Kingdom includes part of the island of Ireland, so it does have one land border — with the Republic of Ireland. Some lists exclude it for that reason.
- Singapore is an island city-state connected to Malaysia only by bridges and a causeway, with no natural land border.
- Bahrain became an island country the moment it opened; it is linked to Saudi Arabia by a causeway but has no land frontier.
Island outlines are some of the most distinctive on the map — Japan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Iceland. Good practice for the Country Shape Quiz.
Play the shape quiz →