The 10 Smallest Countries in the World, Ranked by Area

Ranking countries by size sounds simple until you check the figures. Atlases disagree on Vatican City's area, island counts depend on what you call an island, and population totals depend on who is counted. This guide ranks the ten smallest countries by total area using the same data as Beelad's country pages, explains where the numbers come from, and shows how the list changes when you rank by population instead.

The ten smallest countries by area

The table below counts the 196 countries Beelad covers: the 193 UN member states plus Vatican City, Kosovo and Taiwan. Dependent territories such as Gibraltar or Bermuda are not sovereign states, so they are not in the ranking (see our guide to territories and dependencies). Population is the UN estimate for 1 July 2023 from World Population Prospects 2024.

Five of the ten are in Europe and three in the Pacific. Six are island countries; the other four (Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino and Liechtenstein) sit on the European mainland. All ten together cover 1,326.5 km² (512 sq mi), about half the area of Luxembourg, and hold roughly 1.28 million people, or 0.016% of the world's population. Malta and the Maldives alone account for 83% of those people.

Why Vatican City is 0.49 km², not 0.44 km²

Most lists, including Wikipedia's main area ranking, still give Vatican City as 0.44 km² (44 hectares). That figure goes back to the 1930 edition of the De Agostini Calendario Atlante, which corrected it to 0.49 km² (49 hectares) in its 1945–46 edition. Wikipedia's article on the geography of Vatican City uses 0.49 km² and notes that the old number is still widely cited despite being inaccurate. Beelad uses 0.49 km². The difference is about 11%, which changes nothing about the ranking: Monaco is still more than four times larger.

Vatican City's only land border is 3.5 km long, all of it with Italy, and its highest point is 76 m above sea level. Like San Marino, it is an enclave: a country entirely surrounded by one other country. Lesotho, surrounded by South Africa, is the only other example.

The ten countries, smallest first

1. Vatican City

The seat of the Holy See sits inside Rome and contains St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museums. It is the only country on this list that is not a UN member state; the Holy See takes part as a non-member observer state.

2. Monaco

At 2.02 km², Monaco is about 0.78 sq mi, so the old line about "one square mile" overstates it. The country keeps growing into the sea: the Le Portier district, about 6 hectares of reclaimed land, opened in December 2024 and brings the total to about 2.08 km² (0.80 sq mi). It is the most densely populated sovereign country, with about 19,000 people per km². Only Macau and Hong Kong, which are Chinese territories, are denser.

3. Nauru

A single raised coral island in the central Pacific, Nauru is the smallest island country. Its coastline is about 30 km, and its high point, Command Ridge, is 65 m. Ninety years of phosphate mining have left the central plateau, called Topside and about 80% of the island, a wasteland.

4. Tuvalu

Tuvalu is made up of three reef islands and six atolls with about 26 km² of land. Its highest point is just 4.6 m above sea level, on Niulakita, which makes rising seas a direct threat.

5. San Marino

San Marino surrounds Mount Titano in north-central Italy. By tradition it was founded in 301 AD, which is why it calls itself the world's oldest surviving republic. UNESCO inscribed "San Marino Historic Centre and Mount Titano" as a World Heritage Site in 2008; the listing covers the old town and its three towers on the ridge.

6. Liechtenstein

This Alpine principality lies between Switzerland and Austria. It is one of only two doubly landlocked countries, meaning every neighbor is itself landlocked. The other is Uzbekistan.

7. Marshall Islands

Its 181 km² of land is spread over 29 atolls and 5 islands in the central Pacific. The United States carried out 67 nuclear tests there between 1946 and 1958, 23 of them at Bikini Atoll, which became a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 3 August 2010.

8. Saint Kitts and Nevis

The smallest country in the Americas by both area and population is a two-island federation in the eastern Caribbean. Thomas Warner's English settlers landed on St. Kitts on 7 February 1624 (still dated 1623 in England's old calendar), making it among England's first Caribbean colonies. It became independent from Britain in 1983.

9. Maldives

The Maldives is a double chain of 26 atolls with about 1,190 coral islands and 298 km² of land. It is the world's lowest-lying country. Sources disagree on its highest natural point: Wikipedia gives both 2.4 m and 5.1 m on Vilingili Island in Addu Atoll. Either way, most islands sit only about 1 to 1.5 m above sea level.

10. Malta

An archipelago in the Mediterranean south of Sicily, Malta is the largest country on this list and the most populous, with 532,956 people. Its capital, Valletta, is the European Union's second-smallest capital city at 0.61 km², which makes the city itself about a quarter larger than Vatican City.

Smallest by population

Rank by people instead of area and the list changes. Vatican City stays first, but Palau (459 km²) and Dominica (751 km²) join, while the Maldives and Malta, each with more than half a million people, drop out.

The UN figures are modeled estimates, so they differ from national censuses. Tuvalu's 2022 census counted 10,643 people and Nauru's 2021 census counted 11,680. Both sources agree that Tuvalu is the least populous UN member state, with Nauru second. For how censuses and UN estimates relate, see our guide to population data.

Density: where small means crowded

Small area does not mean empty. Monaco packs more people onto each square kilometer than any other country, while Saint Kitts and Nevis, nearly 130 times larger, has fewer than 200 per km².

Why different lists give different numbers

If you compare rankings from several sources, small mismatches are normal. The order of the top ten is the same everywhere; only the decimals move.

Total area here means land plus inland water within a country's borders and coastline. Territorial seas and exclusive economic zones are not included; by sea area some of these countries are enormous (see our guide to maritime borders).

Key takeaways

• By total area the ten smallest countries are Vatican City, Monaco, Nauru, Tuvalu, San Marino, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Maldives and Malta.
• Vatican City is 0.49 km². The 0.44 km² figure you will still see is a 1930 atlas value.
• Monaco is 0.78 sq mi (about 0.80 since its 2024 land reclamation), not one square mile, and is the most densely populated country.
• By population, Tuvalu is the smallest UN member state, then Nauru and Palau. Vatican City is smaller still but is not a UN member.
• When you quote a population, say whose figure it is and what date it refers to.