Ranked data list
Capitals of the world, one row per country
192 capital entries across the 190 countries this site holds data for, in one alphabetised table, with the 1 country that has three capitals and the 10 whose seat of government sits in a city our data does not store. It is a list of 190, not of 195, and the sections below say exactly which names are missing and why.
Every country and its capital, A–Z
Sorted by country name, because that is how the question arrives. The capital column shows every value the dataset holds for that country, which for 1 row is more than one.
The one with three capitals
Most capital lists flatten South Africa into one answer. Our data is the rare case that keeps all three, because the ISO record it is built from carries a list rather than a string: Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Cape Town — executive, judicial and legislative seats respectively. That single row is why this page counts 192 capitals across 190 countries rather than 190 and one.
Where the government sits somewhere else
A capital and a seat of government are not always the same city, and one-value-per-country data has to pick. These 10 rows show both sides of that choice: the stored capital, then the city most reference works add.
| Country | Capital in our data | City also cited | What that city holds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bolivia | Sucre | La Paz | seat of government and parliament |
| Ivory Coast | Yamoussoukro | Abidjan | economic capital, most embassies |
| Tanzania | Dodoma | Dar es Salaam | commercial hub, de facto seat |
| Sri Lanka | Colombo | Sri Jayawardenepa Kotte | administrative capital |
| Eswatini | Lobamba | Mbabane | administrative capital |
| Benin | Porto-Novo | Cotonou | seat of government in practice |
| Netherlands | Amsterdam | The Hague | seat of government and courts |
| Malaysia | Kuala Lumpur | Putrajaya | federal administrative centre |
| Myanmar | Naypyidaw | Yangon | largest city, capital until 2005 |
| Pakistan | Islamabad | Karachi | first capital until 1959 |
Capitals that are the country
5 rows store a capital identical to the country name — Djibouti, Luxembourg, Monaco, Singapore, Vatican City — which is the signature of a city-state: the place you draw and the state you name are the same polygon. 11 rows come closer than that but stop short of matching, appending a word such as “City” to the country name.
| Country | Capital | Relationship | Area (km²) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andorra | Andorra la Vella | contains it | 468 km² |
| Djibouti | Djibouti | same string | 23,200 km² |
| Guatemala | Guatemala City | contains it | 108,889 km² |
| Kuwait | Kuwait City | contains it | 17,818 km² |
| Luxembourg | Luxembourg | same string | 2,586 km² |
| Mexico | Mexico City | contains it | 1,964,375 km² |
| Monaco | Monaco | same string | 2.02 km² |
| Panama | Panama City | contains it | 75,417 km² |
| San Marino | City of San Marino | contains it | 61 km² |
| Singapore | Singapore | same string | 710 km² |
| Vatican City | Vatican City | same string | 0.44 km² |
Capitals by continent
The same rows grouped the way the rest of the site groups them, on the UN geoscheme. The last two columns give each continent’s capital by population weight and by land weight, which are rarely the same city.
| Continent | Countries | Capital entries | Landlocked | Capital of the most populous country | Capital of the largest country |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 53 | 55 | 16 | Abuja (Nigeria, 201.0 m) | Algiers (Algeria) |
| Asia | 45 | 45 | 11 | Beijing (China, 1.40 bn) | Beijing (China) |
| Europe | 44 | 44 | 14 | Moscow (Russia, 144.4 m) | Moscow (Russia) |
| North America | 22 | 22 | 0 | Washington D.C. (United States, 328.2 m) | Ottawa (Canada) |
| Oceania | 14 | 14 | 0 | Canberra (Australia, 25.4 m) | Canberra (Australia) |
| South America | 12 | 12 | 2 | Brasília (Brazil, 211.0 m) | Brasília (Brazil) |
What this list leaves out
A country only appears here once the outline pipeline has geometry for it, and that is the constraint deciding the length of this table. 8 names a general capitals list would carry have no row in this dataset at all: Cuba, Israel, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Palestine, Western Sahara. 2 rows run the other way — Somaliland and China Taiwan are listed here because the game draws them as separate outlines, even though most capital counts stop short of treating them as member states. So read this as one dataset's contents, 190 clickable rows and a named set of exceptions, not as a census.
How these figures are measured
Capitals are not typed in here: every string on this page is read from the same JSON file the drawing game loads, built by joining ISO country metadata to Natural Earth outlines. Where the ISO record lists several capitals we keep all of them, which is why 192 values sit on 190 rows. Areas come from that metadata except where a state has no ISO record and the figure was measured from the geometry instead. Populations are the estimates shipped with the game, and name lengths are counted in characters on the stored string. The sibling rankings read the same rows: largest countries by area, smallest countries, the African count.
Capitals of the world — questions
How many capital cities are there in the world?
There is no single answer, and this page gives you the count it can show its work for: 192 capital strings attached to 190 countries. The usual figures are 193 UN member states or 195 including observers and partially recognised states. Ours differs in both directions — 8 names a general list would carry have no row here at all, while 2 entries in this dataset are states most lists stop short of counting.
Which country has more than one capital?
In this dataset exactly 1: South Africa, whose record carries 3 capitals — Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Cape Town: executive, judicial and legislative. All 190 rows have at least one capital, so nothing here is blank. Sources that list Bolivia and Malaysia as multi-capital states show them in the seat-of-government table below as single entries instead.
Why does your list say the capital of Bolivia is Sucre?
Because that is the one value our data holds. Bolivia's constitutional capital is Sucre, where the judiciary sits, while La Paz hosts the government — a split reference works handle by listing both. Our join keeps a single primary string for 10 such countries, including Bolivia, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, so treat that table as the correction to the main list rather than a contradiction of it.
What is the longest and the shortest capital name here?
Bandar Seri Begawan at 19 characters, the capital of Brunei. At the other end, 4 characters is the floor, shared by Apia, Baku, Bern, Dili, Doha, Juba, Kyiv, Lima, Lomé, Oslo, Riga, Rome, Suva. Length is measured on the stored string, so "Washington D.C." counts the punctuation and "São Tomé" counts the accents as one character each.
Do any two countries share a capital name?
Not in this data: 192 capital strings, 192 unique values. The near-misses stay distinct — San Marino's capital is stored as "City of San Marino" while Andorra's is "Andorra la Vella", and 11 capitals contain their country's name without matching it exactly. The 5 that match outright are Djibouti, Luxembourg, Monaco, Singapore, Vatican City.
Which capitals are not their country's biggest city?
That is not computable from this dataset, and we would rather say so than guess: there is no city-population field, only the capital name and the country's total population. The honest proxy is the seat-of-government table, which covers the 10 cases reference works agree on. Size is no guide either — 43 of the countries listed here are landlocked, and their capitals are inland by necessity, not by choice.
How do I use this list to practise?
Every row in the main table links to that country's drawing page, so a capital question becomes a border you have to place. Group the rows by continent with the 6 continent pages, or work the size extremes from the two sibling rankings on this site.