List of sovereign states in the context of "United Nations General Assembly observers"

A country is an area of land, which has its own government and laws, or used to have them, such as a state, a nation, a nation state, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, a state with limited recognition, a constituent country, or a dependent territory. Most sovereign states, but not all countries, are members of the United Nations.

There is no universal agreement on the number of "countries" in the world with a range between 193 to 237. This ambiguity is a result of several states having disputed sovereignty status or limited recognition, and a number of non-sovereign entities are commonly considered countries. The definition and usage of the word "country" has fluctuated and changed over time. The Economist wrote in 2010 that "any attempt to find a clear definition of a country soon runs into a thicket of exceptions and anomalies."

The gross world product (GWP), also known as gross world income (GWI), is the combined gross national income (previously, the "gross national product") of all the countries in the world. Because imports and exports balance exactly when considering the whole world, this also equals the total global gross domestic product (GDP). According to the World Bank, the 2013 nominal GWP was approximately 75.59 trillion United States dollars. In 2017, according to the CIA's World Factbook, the GWP was around $80.27 trillion in nominal terms and totaled approximately 127.8 trillion international dollars in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). The per capita PPP GWP in 2017 was approximately 17,500 international dollars according to the World Factbook. According to the World Bank, the 2020 GWP in current dollars was approximately $84.705 trillion.

Below is a list of sovereign states with the dates of their formation (date of their independence) and date of their current form of government (their constitution), this later sorted by continent.

This list includes the 195 states which are currently member states of the United Nations or non-member observer states with the United Nations General Assembly. This does not include extinct states, but does include several states with limited recognition.

This is a list of sovereign states by their de jure systems of government, as specified by the incumbent regime's constitutional law. This list does not measure the degree of democracy, political corruption, or state capacity of governments.

The following is a list of English-speaking population by country, including information on both native speakers and second-language speakers.

This is the list of countries and other inhabited territories of the world by estimated total population. It is based on estimates published by the United Nations in the 2024 revision of World Population Prospects. It presents population estimates from 1950 to the present.

As of September 2025, the State of Israel is recognized as a sovereign state by 160 of the other 192 member states of the United Nations, or approximately 84% of all UN members. The State of Israel was formally established by the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, and was admitted to the United Nations (UN) as a full member state on 11 May 1949. It also maintains bilateral ties with all of the UNSC Permanent Five. 28 member states have either never recognized Israel or have withdrawn their recognition; others have severed diplomatic relations without explicitly withdrawing their recognition. Additionally, many non-recognizing countries have challenged Israel's existence—predominantly those in the Muslim world—due to significant animosity stemming from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Arab–Israeli conflict.