It's not always easy being a country, and these countries that don't exist can tell you all about it
13 Major Countries That Aren’t Actually Countries
Updated on Apr. 29, 2025
What makes a country?
We tend to use the term “country” loosely, but to qualify as one, real estate on the world map must meet certain criteria, according to the 1933 Montevideo Convention. A country must encompass a defined area, have a permanent population and have a government that is capable of interacting with other states. That may not sound like a stringent checklist, but it disqualifies a number of places that we generally think of as countries but, technically, aren’t. In other words, they are countries that don’t exist.
The countries that do qualify as such form a relatively compact club. The United Nations officially recognizes 193 of them as members, but many places that we call countries, while planning vacations or compiling our bucket lists, aren’t categorized as countries at all. Some omissions from this country club would stump even the most geographically aware world travelers. Read on to learn more about countries that don’t exist.
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Bermuda
If you vacation on this North Atlantic island, you’re vacationing in the United Kingdom—sort of. Unlike independent and sovereign Commonwealth countries like the Bahamas, Barbados and Jamaica, Bermuda is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, which controls its foreign affairs, defense and security. While Bermuda has been on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories since 1946, it’s not officially a country. It is, however, on the road to becoming a member of Caricom (short for the Caribbean Community)—an intergovernmental political and economic union of countries and territories in the Caribbean.
In 2022, Bermuda Premier David Burt ruled out seeking independence from Britain during the then-current session of parliament, which concluded in February 2025. Previously, he told the House of Assembly in 2018 that it was “unacceptable in a modern democracy” to have “decisions made thousands of miles away that impact our customs, our institutions and our livelihoods.” But there’s no indication that the current parliament intends to take any further steps toward independence.
Bosnia
We usually refer to the beautiful, hilly country to the west of Serbia as simply Bosnia, but that name actually applies only to the northern portion of a larger country known as Bosnia and Herzegovina. To make matters even more complicated, within the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are two separate entities: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska.
Despite its name, Republika Srpska is not a part of Serbia, but is home primarily to Bosnian Serbs. There has been talk of secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina for years. In April 2025, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik doubled down on those threats, calling Bosnia’s state court “an occupying force” in Republika Srpska.
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s compound moniker may not exactly roll off the tongue, which might be why most locals in Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities tend to leave out “Herzegovina” when talking about their country. If you do the same while visiting, most everyone—save for Herzegovina locals in the south—will probably forgive you for it.
England
Charles III is commonly referred to as the “King of England,” but if that title were accurate, he’d be a monarch without an actual country. England is a non-sovereign state in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. When Americans use “England” interchangeably with “the U.K.” and “Great Britain” (which refers to the island containing England, Scotland and Wales), they’re wrong. England is actually just the dominant and highest-profile component of both. As such, there isn’t talk of England seceding from the United Kingdom, as has been the case in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales over the years.
What makes things even more confusing is that Charles is also the head of state in 14 countries beyond the U.K. These countries, known as the Commonwealth realms, are: Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, St. Christopher and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, New Zealand, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
Greenland
The world’s largest island that is not also a continent (clocking in at approximately 836,300 square miles), Greenland has been a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark since the middle of the last century. Although Greenlanders live on a different continent (North America) from Denmark and have their own official language (Greenlandic) and monarch (Queen Margrethe II), Greenlanders conduct business using the Danish krone. Denmark also sets Greenland’s foreign and defense policy.
It’s an arrangement U.S. President Donald Trump would like to change. He spoke about “buying” Greenland back in 2019, calling it “essentially a real estate deal.” Though the purchase never happened, Trump brought up the idea again shortly after taking office in 2025. “We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it,” he said in an address to Congress in March 2025. “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”
Danish officials have said repeatedly that their country (territory) is not for sale.
Korea
The U.S. Department of State recognized the entire East Asian peninsula of Korea as a country from 1882 to 1905, but since 1948, Korea technically has not been a country. Instead, it’s a region with two sovereign states: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), led by Kim Jong-un, and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), led by President Han Duck-soo.
Not surprisingly, given the decades of turmoil since the Korean War in the early 1950s, they aren’t particularly friendly neighbors. As Jon Herskovitz put it in a 2025 Bloomberg News article: “The guns fell silent in the Korean War seven decades ago, but the hostilities never truly ended.” More than 1 million troops are stationed in the small strip of land that divides North Korea from the Republic of Korea.
Northern Ireland
When we talk about the country of Ireland, we’re generally talking about the entire island to the west of Great Britain. But the northeastern portion of the island is not part of the Republic of Ireland. Officially known as Northern Ireland, it’s one of the four non-sovereign nations comprising the United Kingdom, and therefore its citizens, unlike those in the non-Commonwealth Republic of Ireland, all hail the king (Charles).
But Brexit seems to be changing public opinion on the subject of independence. In 2015, a BBC poll found that only 13% of people in Northern Ireland were in favor of reunification with the Republic of Ireland. That number is on the rise: According to a 2024 Irish Times poll, 34% of people in Northern Ireland would vote for reunification in a referendum.
Palestine
While the State of Palestine has been recognized as a non-member observer state by a majority of the United Nations’s 193 constituent countries since 2012, the United States is among the minority holdouts. Palestine isn’t listed on the Department of State’s official list of countries, and in 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem after officially recognizing it as the capital of Israel. With Palestine still claiming Jerusalem as its own capital, the state’s status with the United States is unlikely to change. Still, the United Nations granted additional rights and privileges in May 2024.
Scotland
It’s the birthplace of Sean Connery, Annie Lennox, Gerard Butler and Alexander Graham Bell, and it has its own sometimes hard-to-decipher accent, but the land associated with kilts and bagpipes is not actually an independent country. Although it was, for centuries, a sovereign state with separate monarchs (including Mary, Queen of Scots, who ruled from 1542 to 1567), Scotland, like England, is now part of the country known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But not everyone in Scotland is happy with that arrangement. As of March 2025, 46% of Scottish adults supported being independent from the United Kingdom.
St. Martin
Here is where things get a little confusing. St. Martin is an island in the Caribbean with a French side (Saint Martin) and a Dutch side (Sint Maarten). However, neither region constitutes an actual country—nor do the two parts combined. The northern side is a territory of France, while the southern side belongs to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, along with the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao. It’s the only place in the world where France and the Netherlands are neighbors, and Saint Martin is the closest part of France to the United States. No matter how it’s spelled, St. Martin is surrounded by both the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, and it’s known for sunny days year-round.
Taiwan
If something is “Made in Taiwan,” it’s technically made in China—at least by U.N. and U.S. standards … for now. China considers Taiwan to be one of the countries that don’t exist: Though Taiwanese citizens can travel the world with Taiwanese passports, and they think of themselves as belonging to a separate country, China continues to dispute Taiwan’s sovereign status. And most of the U.N.’s member countries back it up.
Only 12 countries (plus the Vatican) officially recognize Taiwan as a country. According to a 2024 BBC News article, “China sees self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be under Beijing’s control—and has not ruled out the use of force to take the island.”
Tasmania
Blame it on the Tasmanian Devil, the Looney Tunes cartoon character that established Tasmania as a land down under with its own identity, at least among young kids. In reality, Tasmania is one of Australia’s six states, located about 150 miles from the mainland. It’s sort of like Hawaii, only a much shorter flight away from its parent country. Proposals for secession surfaced from the 1970s through the 1990s, although they weren’t exactly taken seriously. The most recent theoretical talk of secession occurred in 2019, when then-Premier Will Hodgman shut down the idea. “I think it’s important to remain part of the federation,” he said. “My government has no plan to secede.”
Transnistria
If you’re on a road trip from Moldova to Ukraine in Eastern Europe, and you decide to check out this small strip of land en route, be prepared for some pretty rigid customs checkpoints. Transnistria, also known as Trans-Dniester, is located between the Dniester river and the Ukrainian border. Numerous statues of Vladimir Lenin and a strong militaristic vibe betray its Soviet past. Despite the intensity of the passport controls (likely intended to deter—or profit from—the smuggling that has dominated the area for decades), and the fact that it has its own currency and capital city (Tiraspol), Transnistria isn’t an actual country. The region broke away from Moldova in 1990, and although it’s still internationally recognized as part of that country, Transnistria’s heart faces east, toward Russia. This is, in part, because Russia supports Transnistria economically, politically and militarily, with an estimated 1,500 soldiers in the region.
Wales
The birthplace of Tom Jones and Catherine Zeta-Jones is not, as many assume, an actual country. This final entry in the countries-that-don’t-exist list is but one-fourth of the British Isles’ quartet of non-sovereign nations that make up the U.K. (the others are England, Scotland and Northern Ireland). While the subject of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom appears to be recurrent, Wales seems less likely to attempt brokering a split. As of July 2024, roughly 24% of Welsh people thought that Wales should be independent from the rest of the United Kingdom.
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Sources:
- Caribbean Today: “Bermuda’s Premier Rules Out Independence Before 2025”
- Deutsche Welle: “What is Republika Srpska?”
- The Guardian: “Trump confirms he is considering attempt to buy Greenland”
- Bloomberg News: “Understanding the Forever Conflict Between North and South Korea”
- Irish Times: “Support for Irish Unification Growing in Northern Ireland, Poll Finds”
- CNBC: “After US Embassy Makes Controversial Move to Jerusalem, More Countries Follow its Lead”
- Statista: “Voting Intention in a Referendum on Scottish Independence from January 2018 to March 2025”
- BBC: “China and Taiwan: A Really Simple Guide”
- The Companion to Tasmanian History: “Secession”
- Foreign Policy: “Transnistria Isn’t the Smuggler’s Paradise It Used to Be”
- Statista: “Should Wales Be an Independent Country?”
