Palau 🇵🇼

Palau is a country in Micronesia, one of the 7 entries this site files under that subregion. In formal use it is Republic of Palau. Ngerulmud is the capital.

By land area it covers 459 km², which ranks it 202nd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind the Northern Mariana Islands and just ahead of Seychelles. For scale, it is about half again the size of Malta.

Around 17,695 people live there, placing it 224th of 249 by population — between Saint Martin above it and the Cook Islands below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 5th of 7 in size and 6th in population.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Palau ranks 202nd of 249 by area and 224th by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 249 entries and less than a thousandth of a percent 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 Palau in the size ordering are Northern Mariana Islands at 464 km² and Seychelles at 452 km², against Palau's 459 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Palau averages 39 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 180th 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.

Plotted on a globe it falls at 7.5° north, 134.5° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 835 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Ethiopia, Venezuela and the Central African Republic — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

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, a group made up mostly of islands and island groups.

Palau 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 Guam, roughly 1,300 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. Philippines and Timor-Leste sit in a different world region from Palau yet rank 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 Palau's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 39 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Palau is a Palauan.

It recognises 2 languages: English and Palauan. Palauan is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Palau. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Inside Oceania it places 17th of 27 by population, and it accounts for 3.4% of everyone living in Micronesia.

Zoom in from the world to Micronesia and Palau sits 6th of 7 by population and 5th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Marshall Islands just above and Nauru just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇲🇭 Marshall Islands
• 🇳🇷 Nauru
• 🇬🇺 Guam

Palau 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, Palau 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 United States dollar ($, USD). That is a shared currency: 18 other entries use it, including American Samoa, the Bahamas, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands and Cambodia.

Websites there use the .pw domain. Calls from overseas start with +680. Standard country codes: pw and PLW.

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

Palau is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.