Blank map of Asia with all 45 countries

The map, without labels

Every outline sits where the country actually is, on one projection framed from 24° E to 150° E and 12° S to 58° N. Nothing has been moved to make the continent fit a rectangle: Turkey keeps its European corner because the frame starts just west of the Bosphorus, and Japan is an arc of 4 shapes rather than one blob. Those 45 centroids spread over 105° of longitude and 55° of latitude, which is why the canvas is 1000 by 666 units — the flattest of the site's 5 framed maps, ahead of Europe at 1.43 to one.

It is drawn in Lambert azimuthal equal-area, centred on the middle of that frame, so the proportions are honest on paper: 9,706,961 km² of China is 13672 times the 710 km² of Singapore, and Mercator is nowhere in the chain. Note before you fill it in — this site files Russia under Europe, so 17,098,242 km² of Siberia is not drawn and the canvas's north is deliberately empty. Mongolia's neighbours in our data are China and Russia, and only 1 of them is on this map.

Only 36 of the 45 outlines are wide enough to hold a printed name at this scale; Bahrain, Bhutan, Brunei, Cyprus, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Singapore and Timor-Leste are below that floor, so they stay dots on the answer key.

How many countries are in Asia? It is 45 here

Asia's edge with Europe is a convention rather than a coastline, and this map follows the grouping the game is organised by. That puts 4 countries in Central Asia and 16 in Western Asia — including Turkey, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the 5 states some atlases file in Europe. Another 4 names the geoscheme counts in Asia have no outline in our data yet: Kazakhstan, Maldives, Israel and Palestine. That is the whole difference between 45 here and the longer lists elsewhere.

Steppe, sea and the countries with no coast

Asia holds more land with no coastline than any other continent here: 11 of the 45 countries, 14% of its land, and all 4 states the UN calls Central Asia. That is the steppe — an interior defined by which countries you touch rather than by a shore, which is why it is hard to draw. At the other extreme, 6 countries have no land border at all: Japan, Philippines, China Taiwan, Cyprus, Bahrain and Singapore.

Uzbekistan is the odd one: all 4 of its neighbours are themselves landlocked, so reaching the ocean means crossing two international borders. Only 2 countries in the whole 190-country dataset qualify, the other being Liechtenstein in Europe. The last column below counts neighbours that our data puts on a different continent's map — 8 such links across Asia, 5 of them to Russia.

All 45 countries: area, population and capital

Sorted largest first. Each name links to that country's drawing page, where the same outline is what you sketch and get scored on, and where the blank canvas is waiting.

Which Asian borders are the hardest to draw?

The detail column is measured, not guessed: it weighs how much border a country carries against the area it encloses, then adds a penalty for every separate piece its outline falls into. In Asia that second term does almost all the work — the most fragmented shapes here are Indonesia (13), Philippines (11) and Japan (4).

The mainland traps are subtler. Bangladesh is one shape at 6.60 detail, and people still place it wrongly: its 2 land neighbours are Myanmar and India, so it is defined by what surrounds it. Myanmar has the same problem further east — a tail that has to point south.

How to use a blank map of Asia

1. 01

   Print at A3, or fill it in on screen

   Use your browser's print command: the outlines print as black lines on white and the map carries no labels of its own. Asia is a wide canvas, so landscape at A3 keeps the Indonesian islands readable; A4 is fine for the mainland.

2. 02

   Draw the three peninsulas first

   Arabia, the Indian subcontinent and Mainland South-East Asia hang south from the landmass like three tabs. Put their shapes and their angles down before any interior, and the western, southern and eastern groups in the table below suddenly have something to be measured against.

3. 03

   Then the island arc

   East of Bangladesh the continent stops being a coast and becomes a line of islands: Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia's two halves, Indonesia out to Papua. Drawn as one blob each they are wrong, and the trick is placing separate shapes along a curve.

4. 04

   Anchor the relationships people get wrong

   Turkey sits north of Syria and west of Armenia, with a corner of it in Europe. Bangladesh is almost enclosed by India. Mongolia is wedged between China and Russia. North and South Korea are one peninsula and two countries. Get those four right and the map stops fighting you.

5. 05

   Redraw the same map straight away

   Check the key, mark what you missed, then print a second copy and fill it in again from memory in the same sitting. The second pass is where the learning happens; the game scores each country against its real border.

One more drill: cover the answer key and name these countries by size, largest first. If your mental map holds Singapore at 710 km² and China at 9,706,961 km² in proportion — and knows that the steppe north of Uzbekistan belongs to Kazakhstan, which is not on this map — the rest of Asia falls into place.

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Blank map of Asia — questions