How Many Countries Are in South America?

Twelve. South America has 12 sovereign countries — the fewest of any inhabited continent. The number is not in dispute. What it leaves off the list is the interesting part.

The twelve are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. Unlike Africa’s 54 or the world’s contested 195, that count is stable and uncontroversial — no observer states, no breakaway republics waiting in the wings. But South America is also a continent whose map is not made up entirely of South American countries. One corner of it is, legally, Europe.

Below: a tool to rank all twelve by land area and population, and a game to test whether you can name a country from its outline.

The piece of South America that is France

On the continent’s northern shoulder, between Suriname and Brazil, sits French Guiana. It is not a country and not a colony — it is an overseas department of France, as fully part of the French Republic as Normandy. That makes it part of the European Union: the currency is the euro, the elections are French, and it is the largest EU territory outside Europe. Stand on its coast and you are, constitutionally, in the EU. This is why French Guiana never appears in the count of 12 — it is not South America’s thirteenth country, it is a piece of an existing European one.

Europe’s rockets launch from here

French Guiana’s status has a striking consequence. Because Europe needed a launch site near the equator — where the Earth’s spin lends rockets extra speed — the European Space Agency built its spaceport at Kourou, on the French Guianese coast. In operation since 1968, the Guiana Space Centre is where Ariane rockets lift off. Europe’s gateway to space is, geographically, in South America — a quirk that exists only because a slice of the continent is legally European soil.

The other territories on the map

French Guiana is the largest non-sovereign piece, but not the only one. The Falkland Islands, off Argentina’s southern coast, are a British Overseas Territory — governed from London, claimed by Argentina as the Islas Malvinas, and the subject of a 1982 war. South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, further out, are British too. None of these is a country, so none changes the figure of 12 — but each is a reminder that “how many countries” and “who governs this land” are different questions.

Two languages, and three exceptions

South America is often called a Spanish-speaking continent, and mostly it is: Spanish is the official language of nine of the twelve countries. The giant exception is Brazil, whose Portuguese alone makes it the continent’s largest country by both area and population — so by people, the continent is closer to half Portuguese. Then there are the three Guianas, each carrying a different European tongue: Guyana speaks English, Suriname speaks Dutch, and French Guiana — not a country — speaks French. Indigenous languages run deep too: Guaraní is co-official in Paraguay, and Quechua and Aymara in the Andean states.

Twelve is one of the few country counts that no one argues about. The catch is that the continent is slightly larger than the countries on it — and one corner of the map answers to Paris.

Can you name them by shape?

All twelve South American countries shown as outlines only, five names to choose from each time. Chile and Brazil are unmistakable — but the three small countries in the north are easier to mix up than you would think.