Blank map
Blank map of North America with all 22 countries
One unlabeled outline of every sovereign state this site counts in North America, drawn from the same Natural Earth geometry the drawing game scores you against — not a stylised cartoon of the continent. Print it and fill it in, check the labelled answer key below, and use the table of capitals, areas, populations and neighbours for all 22 of them.
The map, without labels
Every outline sits where the country actually is, on one shared canvas framed on longitude 170° W to 50° W and latitude 5° N to 84° N. That box is deliberately generous: it keeps Alaska, which a great many North America maps drop or push into an inset, and it keeps the whole Lesser Antilles arc down to Trinidad, which sits off the north coast of South America. Nothing has been moved, enlarged or tidied up.
It is drawn in Lambert azimuthal equal-area centred on the continent, not the Mercator a web map uses. The difference is most violent up north, where Mercator stretches land about eightfold at 70° N — which is why a Mercator North America looks like a Canada-shaped blob with a tail, and why so many people draw the Canadian Arctic as wide as the United States. Here 9,984,670 km² of Canada and 9,372,610 km² of United States are in proportion, and the Yucatán is the small hook it really is.
What you will not find on it: Cuba, whose outline is not in our data yet, Greenland, the Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico and the British and US Virgin Islands. The first is a data gap we should close; the rest are dependent territories rather than sovereign states, so they are outside the 190-country set this site scores.
11 of the 22 outlines are wide enough to hold a name without covering a neighbour, so the answer key below labels 11 and leaves 11 blank; Barbados, Saint Lucia and their neighbours in the Lesser Antilles are dots at this scale and belong in the table instead.
Answer key — the same map with country names
A name is printed only where the outline is wide enough to hold it without covering a neighbour, which is why some shapes stay blank here too. On a desktop browser, hover any outline to get its name in a tooltip; for the rest, read them off the table underneath.
How many countries are in North America? It is 22 here
There is no single correct number, because "North America" is used for two different things: the continental plate including the Caribbean, and the three-country northern block of Canada, the United States and Mexico. This map uses the UN geoscheme's continental definition, which is the grouping the game is organised by, so 22 countries in three subregions. The practical consequence is that two honest reference maps can disagree by a country or two over where Mexico belongs — and neither is wrong about the outlines.
| Subregion | Countries | Area (km²) | Population | Largest | Smallest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caribbean | 12 | 109,718 | 27.6 m | Dominican Republic | Saint Kitts and Nevis |
| Central America | 8 | 2,486,653 | 176.6 m | Mexico | El Salvador |
| Northern America | 2 | 19,357,280 | 365.8 m | Canada | United States |
All 22 countries: area, population and capital
Sorted largest first. Each name links to that country's drawing page, where the same outline is the thing you sketch and get scored on — useful once you have filled the blank map in and want to check a shape rather than a name. Between them these 22 countries cover 21,953,651 km² and about 570.1 m people, from Canada at 9,984,670 km² down to Saint Kitts and Nevis at 261 km².
| Country | Subregion | Capital | Area (km²) | Population | Land borders |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | Northern America | Ottawa | 9,984,670 | 37.6 m | 1 |
| United States | Northern America | Washington D.C. | 9,372,610 | 328.2 m | 2 |
| Mexico | Central America | Mexico City | 1,964,375 | 127.6 m | 3 |
| Nicaragua | Central America | Managua | 130,373 | 6.5 m | 2 |
| Honduras | Central America | Tegucigalpa | 112,492 | 9.7 m | 3 |
| Guatemala | Central America | Guatemala City | 108,889 | 16.6 m | 4 |
| Panama | Central America | Panama City | 75,417 | 4.2 m | 2 |
| Costa Rica | Central America | San José | 51,100 | 5.0 m | 2 |
| Dominican Republic | Caribbean | Santo Domingo | 48,671 | 10.7 m | 1 |
| Haiti | Caribbean | Port-au-Prince | 27,750 | 11.3 m | 1 |
| Belize | Central America | Belmopan | 22,966 | 390 k | 2 |
| El Salvador | Central America | San Salvador | 21,041 | 6.5 m | 2 |
| Bahamas | Caribbean | Nassau | 13,943 | 389 k | none (island) |
| Jamaica | Caribbean | Kingston | 10,991 | 2.9 m | none (island) |
| Trinidad and Tobago | Caribbean | Port of Spain | 5,130 | 1.4 m | none (island) |
| Dominica | Caribbean | Roseau | 751 | 72 k | none (island) |
| Saint Lucia | Caribbean | Castries | 616 | 183 k | none (island) |
| Antigua and Barbuda | Caribbean | Saint John's | 442 | 97 k | none (island) |
| Barbados | Caribbean | Bridgetown | 430 | 287 k | none (island) |
| Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | Caribbean | Kingstown | 389 | 111 k | none (island) |
| Grenada | Caribbean | St. George's | 344 | 112 k | none (island) |
| Saint Kitts and Nevis | Caribbean | Basseterre | 261 | 53 k | none (island) |
Which North American borders are the hardest to draw?
The detail column is measured, not guessed: it compares how much border a country carries with the area it encloses, then adds a penalty for every separate piece its outline falls into. A high number means more turns of the coast to remember and more disconnected shapes to position — which is why Bahamas, at 13,943 km², sits above Canada on this table, and why the five most fragmented outlines here (Bahamas, Canada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, United States, Haiti) are disproportionately painful for their size.
| Country | Detail | Pieces | Area (km²) | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bahamas | 15.17 | 14 | 13,943 | hard |
| Canada | 13.21 | 8 | 9,984,670 | hard |
| United States | 8.29 | 2 | 9,372,610 | hard |
| Mexico | 6.87 | 1 | 1,964,375 | hard |
| Saint Kitts and Nevis | 6.72 | 2 | 261 | hard |
| Panama | 6.45 | 1 | 75,417 | hard |
| Antigua and Barbuda | 5.79 | 2 | 442 | hard |
| Haiti | 5.01 | 2 | 27,750 | hard |
The three that surprise people are the ones that look easy. Mexico has a Pacific coast, a Gulf coast, the hook of the Yucatán and the separate thin arm of Baja California, and almost nobody gets the taper of the mainland right where it narrows toward Guatemala. Canada is scored as 8 pieces, and the southern line that everyone remembers is only about a third of its border. Panama is small but its outline is a sideways S with the Darién gap at the end, and it is the one shape that connects this continent to South America.
The connected block, neighbour by neighbour
12 of the 22 countries share a land border with another country here; the other 10 are islands. Read this table as the skeleton of the map: Haiti touches only Dominican Republic, while Guatemala is the hinge with 4. If you can place the eight Central American states in this order, you have the isthmus; the rest is the Caribbean.
| Country | Borders | With whom |
|---|---|---|
| Guatemala | 4 | Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico |
| Honduras | 3 | Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua |
| Mexico | 3 | Belize, Guatemala and United States |
| Belize | 2 | Guatemala and Mexico |
| Costa Rica | 2 | Nicaragua and Panama |
| El Salvador | 2 | Guatemala and Honduras |
| Nicaragua | 2 | Costa Rica and Honduras |
| Panama | 2 | Colombia and Costa Rica |
| United States | 2 | Canada and Mexico |
| Canada | 1 | United States |
| Dominican Republic | 1 | Haiti |
| Haiti | 1 | Dominican Republic |
How to use a blank map of North America
- 01
Print at A3, or fill it in on screen
Open your browser's print dialog (Ctrl+P, or Cmd+P on a Mac) and the outlines switch to black lines on white with no labels and no adverts — the map is styled for paper as well as for the screen. This canvas is wider than it is tall, so choose landscape and scale to fit; A3 gives the Central American chain enough room to write inside, A4 is fine if you only want to quiz Canada, the United States and Mexico.
- 02
Draw the mainland first, then the islands
North America reads as one enormous peninsula with a tail, plus two arcs of islands. Fill in Canada, the United States, Mexico and the seven other Central American states first, then place the Caribbean from west to east — Cuba's empty gap, then Jamaica, then Hispaniola, then the Lesser Antilles curving south-east toward Trinidad. People who start with the islands end up with a Caribbean that has drifted into the Atlantic.
- 03
Anchor the four relationships people get wrong
Belize is the Caribbean-side notch east of Guatemala and north of Honduras, and it has no Pacific coast at all; Panama is the tail end of the chain, joining South America at Colombia, and sits far east of Costa Rica; the Yucatán is a broad hook of limestone poking north-east into the Gulf of Mexico; and Florida and Baja California are the two peninsulas that make the United States and Mexico recognisable. Most mistakes on a blank North America map are these four being wrong, not the big countries being missing.
- 04
Give Alaska and Hawai'i their real positions
Both belong to the United States outline here, and both are drawn where they actually are — which is the fastest way to break the habit of the inset box. Alaska is a north-western bulge joined to Canada, more than twice the size of the largest state in the lower forty-eight; Hawai'i is a scatter of small islands in the mid-Pacific, several thousand kilometres from the mainland. A map that flattens both into a corner teaches you a country that does not exist.
- 05
Redraw the same map straight away
Check the answer key, mark what you got wrong, then print a second copy and fill it in again from memory in the same sitting. The second pass is where the learning happens. On the drawing game the same loop usually adds ten to twenty accuracy points between the first attempt and the second, because the feedback tells you which part of the outline you lost rather than only that you lost it.
One more drill worth the time: cover the answer key and name the countries in order of size, largest first. North America is the continent where people invert proportions most happily — Greenland drawn on the map at the size of Africa, the Yucatán drawn twice as wide as it is, and Belize left out altogether because it is 22,966 km² and touches no Pacific port anyone has visited. If your mental map holds Saint Kitts and Nevis at 261 km² and Canada at 9,984,670 km² in the right proportions, those errors stop happening.
Other blank maps
Blank map of North America — questions
How many countries are in North America?
22 on this map. The UN geoscheme splits them three ways — 2 in Northern America (Canada and United States), 8 in Central America, and 12 in the Caribbean — which is the grouping the table below uses. Answers between 20 and 23 are all defensible, because some lists count Central America as seven countries instead of 8 (Mexico moves between the two groups depending on the source), and because the Caribbean's dependent territories — Puerto Rico, the US and British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Aruba, Curaçao, Anguilla, Montserrat — are not sovereign states and so are not on this map or in the game.
Is Cuba on this map?
No, and that is the honest gap on this page: Cuba has about 11.3 million people on roughly 109,884 km², which makes it the largest sovereign state with no outline in our data. Everything else missing from this continent is a territory rather than a country — Greenland and the Faroe Islands (Kingdom of Denmark), Puerto Rico, the Cayman Islands, the British and US Virgin Islands, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Anguilla, Montserrat, Bermuda. Central America's 8 states are all here, as are 12 of the Caribbean's sovereign members.
Can I print this blank map of North America for free?
Yes. The outlines are inline SVG rather than a picture, so they stay sharp at any paper size and print as black lines on white with no labels and no adverts around them. Use your browser's print command, choose landscape orientation, scale to fit. Nothing to download, no sign-up, and the labelled answer key is further down this same page if you want a marked-up copy for yourself.
Which North American border is hardest to draw?
Bahamas by the measurement: 15.17 border detail, the 7th highest of the 190 outlines on the site, because the country is 14 separate shapes scattered over 13,943 km² of shallow bank. Canada is the hard one people actually practise, at 10th: 9,984,670 km² spread across 8 separate pieces, with the Arctic archipelago in the north and a west coast full of inlets. Only Chile, in South America, measures finer than Bahamas anywhere in the Americas.
Is Mexico in North America or Central America?
Both conventions exist. The UN geoscheme files Mexico under Central America, and that is what the subregion column on this page says; most school atlases in English put Mexico in Northern America alongside Canada and the United States. It makes no difference to the outline: Mexico is 1,964,375 km², the 3rd largest in the group it is filed with, and it borders 3 countries (Belize, Guatemala and United States). Pick one convention and be consistent, then expect a quiz to insist on the other.
Is Greenland part of this map?
No, on two counts. Greenland is a country within the Kingdom of Denmark — not a sovereign state, so it is not one of the 190 outlines here — and its landmass lies far outside this page's frame. That matters for scale memory: at 2,166,086 km² Greenland is slightly larger than the 1,964,375 km² of Mexico on any reference list, yet Mercator wall maps show it as big as Africa. Since it is not on this map, the north of the canvas looks emptier than the real continent, which is exactly the illusion worth unlearning.
Why is Central America so hard to fill in?
Because it is 8 countries in a strip of 2,486,653 km², and all but Belize share a Pacific coastline that anyone drawing from memory will shorten. The chain runs Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, with Mexico behind Guatemala. Guatemala is the hinge — 4 neighbours, more than any other country here — and Belize, at 22,966 km², is the one people forget because it does not touch the Pacific.
Does North America have any landlocked countries?
None of the 22 — every country on this map has a coastline, which makes it the only grouping here with a large mainland and not one landlocked state. 10 of the 22 have no land border at all and are defined purely by their own shore: Bahamas, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Saint Kitts and Nevis. The rest form one connected block from Panama up to the Arctic, so the only way to be landlocked here is to be an island.
How big is North America, and how much of it is Canada and the United States?
21,953,651 km² across these 22 countries, which is about 16% of the world's land, and 570.1 m people. Canada and United States alone hold 19,357,280 km² — 88% of the continent's area — but only 64% of its people. The 12 Caribbean states are the mirror image: 109,718 km², about 0.5% of the land, and 5% of the population, most of it in Dominican Republic and Haiti on one island.
How do I practise drawing these borders, not just naming them?
Naming is half the skill; putting a shape where it belongs is the other half. That is what the game does: you draw a country from memory, it is scaled and centred against the real border, and you get an accuracy score plus a nine-sector grid showing which part of the outline you lost. The North America country index has the same 22 shapes, sorted by how much detail each border carries, so you can work from forgiving outlines to painful ones in order — of these 22, 8 are tiered easy, 5 medium and 9 hard.