Venezuela 🇻🇪

Venezuela is an independent state in South America, and a member of the United Nations. The long form of the name is Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The capital is Caracas.

Its territory runs to 916,445 km², which ranks it 34th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Nigeria and just ahead of Pakistan. That makes it almost exactly the same size as Nigeria.

Some 28.4 million people call it home, placing it 53rd of 249 by population — between Cameroon above it and Australia below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 6th of 13 in size and 5th in population.

Its reference point sits at 8.0° north and 66.0° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 891 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Ethiopia, Nigeria and Somalia.

Its land neighbours number 3: Brazil, Colombia and Guyana. The largest of them by area is Brazil, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 265.7 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Spread across 916,445 km², that works out at about 31 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Venezuelan, so residents are Venezuelans.

Officially it is monolingual: Spanish. Spanish is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 22 other entries including Argentina, Belize, Bolivia and Chile.

Inside the Americas it places 8th of 55 by population, and it accounts for 6.8% of everyone living in South America.

The Venezuelan bolívar soberano (VES) is used only in Venezuela among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Spanish is listed for 23 entries here, Venezuela 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 South America and Venezuela sits 5th of 13 by population and 6th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Peru just above and Chile just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

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

• 🇵🇪 Peru
• 🇨🇱 Chile
• 🇧🇷 Brazil

Put next to every other entry on this site, Venezuela ranks 34th of 249 by area and 53rd by population. That works out at 0.61% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.35% 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 Venezuela in the size ordering are Nigeria at 923,768 km² and Pakistan at 881,912 km², against Venezuela's 916,445 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Venezuela averages 31 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 184th 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.

The currency is the Venezuelan bolívar soberano (Bs.S., VES). It is issued for Venezuela alone.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Venezuela, the answer is Caracas.

Its internet country code is .ve. Calls from overseas start with +58. In ISO terms it is ve in two letters and VEN in three.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.