Random Country Generator

The list is the 193 UN member states plus Palestine and Vatican City — 195 in all. That is the line most reference works draw. Territories, dependencies and partly recognised states are not on it, which is a decision rather than an oversight: Taiwan, Kosovo, Puerto Rico, Greenland and Western Sahara are all absent for different reasons, and any list that includes some of them has to argue for each.

Several countries do not have one capital, and we say so. South Africa has three — Pretoria for the executive, Cape Town for parliament, Bloemfontein for the courts; Pretoria is listed. Bolivia's constitutional capital is Sucre while the government sits in La Paz. The Netherlands' capital is Amsterdam but the government is in The Hague. Cote d'Ivoire's official capital is Yamoussoukro while Abidjan does the work, and Benin is the same story with Porto-Novo and Cotonou. Nauru has no official capital at all; Yaren is where the government happens to be.

Jerusalem and Ramallah are listed as they are, not as a verdict. Israel's seat of government is in Jerusalem, whose status is disputed and where most foreign embassies are not located. Palestine's government sits in Ramallah while its declared capital is East Jerusalem. Listing these without comment would be taking a side by omission.

Flags are drawn only where geometry can reproduce them exactly. Just over half the flags here are drawn on this page in SVG, by us, from bands, crosses, triangles, discs and regular stars. The rest carry arms, script, an animal or a crescent, and are not drawn at all rather than drawn nearly right. The flag generator explains that line in full.

No population or area column. Both change, and a static page carrying them is quietly wrong within a year. Everything on this list — the country, its capital, its region, its code — is stable enough to still be true in a decade.