Réunion 🇷🇪

Réunion is a territory in Eastern Africa, and it is not a sovereign state in its own right. Treaties and official documents call it Réunion Island. Government sits in Saint-Denis.

The land area is 2,511 km², which ranks it 181st of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Luxembourg and just ahead of Mauritius. Put next to a territory most people can picture, it is almost exactly the same size as Luxembourg.

The population is about 873,000, placing it 162nd of 249 by population — between Fiji above it and the Comoros below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 15th of 20 in size and 16th in population.

Réunion 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. Réunion 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 currencyEUR
• Its own dialling code+262
• Its own internet domain.re
• Its own ISO codesre / REU
• A designated capitalSaint-Denis

Its reference point sits at 21.1° south and 55.5° east, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 2,354 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Namibia, Paraguay and New Caledonia.

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.

Réunion 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 Mauritius, roughly 230 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 Réunion's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Spread across 2,511 km², that works out at about 348 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Réunion is a Réunionese.

Officially it is monolingual: French. Another 45 entries list French too — among them Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso and Burundi.

Against Africa as a whole it is the 51st most populous of 59 entries, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Eastern Africa.

Réunion does not have the Euro to itself. It is one of 38 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is EUR, 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 EUR travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. French is listed for 46 entries here, Réunion 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 Eastern Africa and Réunion sits 16th of 20 by population and 15th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Djibouti just above and Comoros just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇩🇯 Djibouti
• 🇰🇲 Comoros
• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

The currency is the Euro (€, EUR). Another 37 entries use the same currency — Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and Croatia among them — so exchange rates move for reasons that have nothing to do with Réunion.

Its internet country code is .re. To phone it from abroad you dial +262. Standard country codes: re and REU.

Saint-Denis is the city to remember for this territory.

Réunion 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.