Greater Albania (Albanian: Shqipëria e Madhe) is an irredentist and nationalist concept that seeks to annex the lands that many Albanians consider to form their national homeland. It is based on claims on the present-day or historical presence of Albanian populations in those areas. In addition to the existing Albania, the term incorporates claims to regions in the neighbouring states, the areas include Kosovo, the Preševo Valley of Serbia, territories in southern Montenegro, northwestern Greece (the Greek regional units of Thesprotia and Preveza, referred by Albanians as Chameria, and other territories that were part of the Vilayet of Yanina during the Ottoman Empire), and a western part of North Macedonia. The combination of the populations of these countries and territories of other countries sustaining large ethnic Albanian communities enumerate to over 4 million people.
The unification of an even larger area into a single territory under Albanian authority had been theoretically conceived by the League of Prizren, an organization of the 19th century whose goal was to unify the Albanian inhabited lands (and other regions, mostly from the regions of Macedonia and Epirus) into a single autonomous Albanian Vilayet within the Ottoman Empire, which was briefly achieved de jure in September 1912. The concept of a Greater Albania, as in greater than Albania within its 1913 borders, was conceived and implemented under the fascist Italian and Nazi German occupation of the Balkans during World War II. The idea of unification has roots in the events of the Treaty of London in 1913, when roughly 50% of the predominantly Albanian territories and 40% of the population were left outside the new country's borders.
