New Zealand 🇳🇿

New Zealand is a sovereign country in Australia and New Zealand, in the wider region of Oceania. The short and official forms of the name are the same. Its seat of government is Wellington.

The land area is 270,467 km², which ranks it 77th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Burkina Faso and just ahead of Gabon. That makes it almost exactly the same size as Ecuador.

It is home to roughly 5.3 million people, placing it 124th of 250 by population — between Palestine above it and Oman below. Among the 5 entries in Australia and New Zealand it ranks 2nd by area and 2nd by population.

New Zealand 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 Norfolk Island, roughly 1,440 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 New Zealand's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 41.0° S, 174.0° E, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 4,564 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

It shares no land border with anyone. That puts it among the 85 entries of 250 here with no land neighbours, which shapes how it trades and who it deals with.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 20 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 90 per square kilometre.

Officially it is multilingual, listing English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language. Māori and New Zealand Sign Language are listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes them effectively unique to New Zealand. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Someone from New Zealand is a New Zealander.

Against Oceania as a whole it is the 3rd most populous of 27 entries, and it accounts for 16% of everyone living in Australia and New Zealand.

Put next to every other entry on this site, New Zealand ranks 77th of 250 by area and 124th by population. That works out at 0.18% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.065% 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 New Zealand in the size ordering are Burkina Faso at 272,967 km² and Gabon at 267,668 km², against New Zealand's 270,467 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. New Zealand averages 20 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 206th of the 248 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.

New Zealand does not have the New Zealand dollar to itself. It is one of 5 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is NZD, 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 NZD travels further than you might expect.

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

Money there is the New Zealand dollar ($, NZD). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to New Zealand.

Websites there use the .nz domain. The international dialling code is +64. Standard country codes: nz and NZL.

Wellington is the city to remember for this country.

New Zealand is one of the 193 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.

Zoom in from the world to Australia and New Zealand and New Zealand sits 2nd of 5 by population and 2nd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Australia just above and Norfolk Island just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇦🇺 Australia
• 🇳🇫 Norfolk Island
• 🇦🇺 Australia