Niue 🇳🇺

Niue belongs to Polynesia, and it is a dependent territory rather than a country in the political sense. Unlike most entries, its formal name adds nothing to the short one. Alofi is the capital.

Its recorded population is just 1,700, among the smallest anywhere. Among the 10 entries in Polynesia it ranks 4th by area and 9th by population.

By land area it covers 260 km², which ranks it 218th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Saint Kitts and Nevis and just ahead of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. That makes it around a fifth smaller than the Maldives.

Niue 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. Niue 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 currencyNZD
• Its own dialling code+683
• Its own internet domain.nu
• Its own ISO codesnu / NIU
• A designated capitalAlofi

Its reference point sits at 19.0° south and 169.9° west, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 2,119 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Mozambique, Madagascar and Zimbabwe.

No land border connects it to another territory. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, which shapes how it trades and who it deals with.

Niue 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 American Samoa, roughly 520 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 Niue's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Density comes out at around 6.5 people per square kilometre, which makes it very thinly populated. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

Officially it is multilingual, listing English and Niuean. Niuean is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Niue. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

People from Niue are called Niueans.

Inside Oceania it places 25th of 27 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Polynesia.

Niue 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, Niue 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 Polynesia and Niue sits 9th of 10 by population and 4th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Tokelau just above and Pitcairn Islands just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇹🇰 Tokelau
• 🇵🇳 Pitcairn Islands
• 🇵🇫 French Polynesia

It uses the New Zealand dollar ($, NZD). It shares that currency with the Cook Islands, New Zealand, the Pitcairn Islands and Tokelau.

The top-level domain is .nu. Calls from overseas start with +683. Its ISO codes are nu and NIU, which is what most databases and flag files use.

Alofi is the city to remember for this territory.

On the UN list it does not appear as a member. It uses New Zealand's currency and issues none of its own, which is the usual mark of a dependency. Of the 249 entries here, 57 are territories or observers rather than member states.