All 47 Island Countries of the World

An island country is a sovereign state whose entire territory sits on islands, with no land on a continental mainland. Under that rule there are 46 UN member states, and adding Taiwan produces the 47 that most published lists count. They range from Indonesia, a top-five country by population spread across thousands of islands, down to Nauru, a single coral rock of 21 square kilometres.

The counterintuitive part: being an island country does not mean having no neighbours on land. Eight of the 47 share an island with another state and therefore have land borders. Haiti and the Dominican Republic split Hispaniola, Ireland and the United Kingdom split Ireland, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea each share their island with Indonesia, and Brunei sits on Borneo with Malaysia. Indonesia manages land borders with three different countries without touching the continental mainland.

And the classic argument starter: Australia is not on this list. By convention Australia is treated as a continental landmass rather than an island, which is also what makes Greenland, not Australia, the largest island in the world. If your quiz counts Australia as an island country, the total becomes 48; the definition, as always, decides the answer.