Guernsey 🇬🇬

Guernsey is a territory in Northern Europe, and it is not a sovereign state in its own right. Treaties and official documents call it Bailiwick of Guernsey. Government sits in St. Peter Port.

The land area is 78 km², which ranks it 231st of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Anguilla and just ahead of San Marino. For scale, it is around a quarter larger than San Marino.

It is home to roughly 64,000 people, placing it 207th of 249 by population — between Bermuda above it and Greenland below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 16th of 16 in size and 13th in population.

Guernsey 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. Guernsey 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 currencyGBP, GGP
• Its own dialling code+44
• Its own internet domain.gg
• Its own ISO codesgg / GGY
• A designated capitalSt. Peter Port

The coordinates the dataset gives are 49.5° N, 2.6° W, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 5,507 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Kazakhstan sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

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, which shapes how it trades and who it deals with.

Guernsey 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 Jersey, roughly 40 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.

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 Guernsey's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Spread across 78 km², that works out at about 821 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

It recognises 3 languages: English, French and Guernésiais. Guernésiais is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Guernsey. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Someone from Guernsey is a Channel Islander.

Against Europe as a whole it is the 45th most populous of 53 entries, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Northern Europe.

Guernsey does not have the British pound to itself. It is one of 6 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is GBP, 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 GBP travels further than you might expect.

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

Zoom in from the world to Northern Europe and Guernsey sits 13th of 16 by population and 16th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Isle of Man just above and Faroe Islands just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇮🇲 Isle of Man
• 🇫🇴 Faroe Islands
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom

More than one currency circulates: British pound (GBP) and Guernsey pound (GGP). It shares that currency with the Isle of Man, Jersey, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe.

Its internet country code is .gg. To phone it from abroad you dial +44. Standard country codes: gg and GGY.

St. Peter Port is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Guernsey is not a UN member state. 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.