Austria 🇦🇹

Austria is an independent state in Central Europe, and a member of the United Nations. In formal use it is Republic of Austria. The capital is Vienna.

Some 9.2 million people call it home, placing it 98th of 249 by population — between Togo above it and Belarus below. Within Central Europe alone it is the 3rd largest of 6 and the 4th most populous.

Its territory runs to 83,871 km², which ranks it 115th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Azerbaijan and just ahead of the United Arab Emirates. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is a fraction smaller than Jordan.

Austria has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: Germany, Italy and Slovenia have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Austria's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Austria's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Austria's borders, Czechia, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Slovakia and Switzerland are landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇩🇪 Germany
• 🇮🇹 Italy
• 🇸🇮 Slovenia

Its reference point sits at 47.3° north and 13.3° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 5,269 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

It borders 8 neighbours: Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. The largest of them by area is Germany, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 179.5 million people.

This is one of the world's landlocked countries. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, so all seaborne trade runs through a neighbour's ports. 5 of its neighbours, Czechia, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Slovakia and Switzerland, are landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 109 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Austrian, so residents are Austrians.

Austro-Bavarian German is the only official language. No other entry in this dataset lists Austro-Bavarian German, so on this list it stands alone.

Inside Europe it places 17th of 53 by population, and it accounts for 12% of everyone living in Central Europe.

Zoom in from the world to Central Europe and Austria sits 4th of 6 by population and 3rd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Hungary just above and Slovakia just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Poland is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Central Europe has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇭🇺 Hungary
• 🇸🇰 Slovakia
• 🇵🇱 Poland

The currency is the Euro (€, EUR). That is a shared currency: 37 other entries use it, including Andorra, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia and Cyprus.

Vienna is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Its internet country code is .at. The international dialling code is +43. In ISO terms it is at in two letters and AUT in three.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.

Austria does not have the Euro to itself. It is one of 38 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is EUR, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in EUR travels further than you might expect.

Austro-Bavarian German is listed for Austria and for no other entry on this site. A language confined to one country is unusual, and it is normally a sign of long isolation or of deliberate revival.