France 🇫🇷

France is an independent state in Western Europe, and a member of the United Nations. The long form of the name is French Republic. Paris is the capital.

By land area it covers 551,695 km², which ranks it 50th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Kenya and just ahead of Yemen. For scale, it is a fraction smaller than Kenya.

Around 68.6 million people live there, placing it 23rd of 249 by population — between Tanzania above it and South Africa below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 1st of 8 in size and 2nd in population.

Spread across 551,695 km², that works out at about 124 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is French, so residents are French.

The one official language is French. French is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 45 other entries including Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso and Burundi.

Inside Europe it places 4th of 53 by population, and it accounts for 36% of everyone living in Western Europe.

Zoom in from the world to Western Europe and France sits 2nd of 8 by population and 1st by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Germany just above and Netherlands just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇩🇪 Germany
• 🇳🇱 Netherlands
• 🇩🇪 Germany

The coordinates the dataset gives are 46.0° N, 2.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 5,121 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

The prime meridian also passes close to it, so it straddles the line that divides east from west. Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Saint Pierre and Miquelon sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

8 countries share a land border with it: Andorra, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain and Switzerland. The largest of them by area is Spain, while the most populous is Germany. Together those neighbours hold about 213.0 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Put next to every other entry on this site, France ranks 50th of 249 by area and 23rd by population. That works out at 0.37% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.84% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of France in the size ordering are Kenya at 580,367 km² and Yemen at 527,968 km², against France's 551,695 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. France averages 124 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 99th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

France 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.

Language reaches wider still. French is listed for 46 entries here, France among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

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

Its internet country code is .fr. To phone it from abroad you dial +33. In ISO terms it is fr in two letters and FRA in three.

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

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.