Saint Kitts and Nevis 🇰🇳

Saint Kitts and Nevis is an independent state in the Caribbean, and a member of the United Nations. In formal use it is Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis. Basseterre is the capital.

Around 46,843 people live there, placing it 211th of 250 by population — between the Faroe Islands above it and American Samoa below. Among the 28 entries in the Caribbean it ranks 21st by area and 20th by population.

By land area it covers 261 km², which ranks it 218th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind the Cayman Islands and just ahead of Niue. That makes it a fraction smaller than the Maldives.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Saint Kitts and Nevis ranks 218th of 250 by area and 211th by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 250 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 Saint Kitts and Nevis in the size ordering are Cayman Islands at 264 km² and Niue at 260 km², against Saint Kitts and Nevis's 261 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Saint Kitts and Nevis averages 179 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 76th 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.

Its reference point sits at 17.3° north and 62.8° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,930 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Niger, Mali and Vietnam.

It shares no land border with anyone. That puts it among the 85 entries of 250 here with no land neighbours, so everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air.

Saint Kitts and Nevis 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 Sint Maarten, roughly 85 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 Saint Kitts and Nevis's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 179 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 250 entries here is about 90 per square kilometre.

Officially it is monolingual: English. English is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 90 other entries including American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda and Australia.

The demonym is Kittitian or Nevisian, so residents are Kittitian or Nevisians.

Inside the Americas it places 45th of 56 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in the Caribbean.

Zoom in from the world to Caribbean and Saint Kitts and Nevis sits 20th of 28 by population and 21st by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Dominica just above and Turks and Caicos Islands just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇩🇲 Dominica
• 🇹🇨 Turks and Caicos Islands
• 🇭🇹 Haiti

Saint Kitts and Nevis does not have the Eastern Caribbean dollar to itself. It is one of 8 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is XCD, 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 XCD travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Saint Kitts and Nevis 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.

It uses the Eastern Caribbean dollar ($, XCD). That is a shared currency: 7 other entries use it, including Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada and Montserrat.

The top-level domain is .kn. Calls from overseas start with +1869. In ISO terms it is kn in two letters and KNA in three.

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

Saint Kitts and Nevis 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.