Guam 🇬🇺

Guam is one of the territories of Micronesia that appears on world lists without being a UN member state. Its seat of government is Hagåtña.

The population is about 167,777, placing it 190th of 249 by population — between Saint Lucia above it and Curaçao below. Within Micronesia alone it is the 3rd largest of 7 and the 1st most populous.

It covers 549 km², which ranks it 199th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind the Isle of Man and just ahead of Andorra. For scale, it is around a fifth smaller than Singapore.

Guam does not hold a United Nations seat of its own. It is administered as a dependency or overseas territory rather than as a sovereign state, which is why it sits outside the 192 member states while still appearing among the 249 entries on this site.

Not holding a UN seat is not the same as having no self-government, and the administrative details make that clear. Guam has 5 of the five markers of separate administration tracked on this page — its own currency, its own dialling code, its own internet domain, its own iso codes and a designated capital. In day-to-day terms it is run substantially as its own jurisdiction.

• Its own currencyUSD
• Its own dialling code+1671
• Its own internet domain.gu
• Its own ISO codesgu / GUM
• A designated capitalHagåtña

Its reference point sits at 13.5° north and 144.8° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,499 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Sudan, Chad and Yemen.

There is no land frontier at all — every boundary it has is a coastline. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, so everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air.

Guam has no land border with any country, which changes what "nearby" means. Measured centre to centre in a straight line, the closest other entry on this site is Northern Mariana Islands, roughly 220 km away. These are approximate distances between representative points, not the shortest crossing between two shorelines, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a sailing chart.

Being surrounded by water rather than by neighbours pushes a country's relationships outward. United States Minor Outlying Islands sits in a different world region from Guam yet ranks among its closest geographic company — the kind of pairing that only shows up once you stop thinking in continents.

No land border also means no land crossing: everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air. That single fact drives a lot of what follows on this page, from how goods reach the shops to why Guam's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Density comes out at around 306 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

It recognises 3 languages: Chamorro, English and Spanish. Chamorro, the first listed, is shared with 1 other entry worldwide.

The demonym is Guamanian, so residents are Guamanians.

Against Oceania as a whole it is the 10th most populous of 27 entries, and it accounts for 32% of everyone living in Micronesia.

Guam does not have the United States dollar to itself. It is one of 19 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is USD, 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 USD travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Guam 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.

Within Micronesia, Guam is the most populous of the 7 entries this site lists, and 3rd by area. Kiribati is next in line by population.

Every entry in Micronesia has its own guide here, so if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time, Kiribati is the place to carry on.

• 🇰🇮 Kiribati
• 🇬🇺 Guam

It uses the United States dollar ($, USD). Another 18 entries use the same currency — American Samoa, the Bahamas, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands and Cambodia among them — so exchange rates move for reasons that have nothing to do with Guam.

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

The top-level domain is .gu. Calls from overseas start with +1671. In ISO terms it is gu in two letters and GUM in three.

On the UN list it does not appear as a member. The dataset does not record which state administers it, so this page does not guess. Of the 249 entries here, 57 are territories or observers rather than member states.