Palau

Palau is made of more than 300 islands.

A long coral reef goes around most of them. The bird in the photo is a Palau fruit dove.

Palau is a group of about 340 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, in the southwest corner of Micronesia. The Philippines are about 890 kilometers to the west and New Guinea about 650 kilometers to the south.

Palauan and English are the official languages, and Palau uses the United States dollar. The 2025 census counted 16,491 people. The bird in the photo is a Palau fruit dove, perched on a branch in the Rock Islands.

Palau consists of some 340 coral and volcanic islands on the Kyushu-Palau Ridge, with Guam about 1,330 km to the northeast, New Guinea 650 km to the south and the Philippines 890 km to the west. A barrier reef, continuous on the west and broken on the east, encircles most of the archipelago, and all but six islands lie inside its lagoon.

Palau's 2025 Census of Population and Housing, run by the Division of Planning and Statistics with help from the Pacific Community (SPC), counted 16,491 people living in Palau on census day, April 13, 2025. Palauan and English are official, and the US dollar is the currency. The photo shows a Palau fruit dove (Ptilinopus pelewensis) in the Rock Islands.

Koror is Palau's biggest town.

The government buildings are at Ngerulmud, on the biggest island, Babeldaob.

Babeldaob is Palau's largest island. Since 2006 the capital has been in Melekeok, on Babeldaob, where the government buildings stand at a place called Ngerulmud. The photo shows the entrance to the Office of the President there.

Koror, just south of Babeldaob and joined to it by a bridge, is the largest town and the former capital. Koror is linked by causeway to Malakal Island, where Palau's deepwater port is.

Melekeok on Babeldaob (Babelthuap) became the capital in October 2006; its capitol complex stands at Ngerulmud. Koror, the largest population center and former capital, is joined to Babeldaob by a steel bridge and by causeways to Malakal, site of the deepwater port, and Arakabesan.

Other inhabited islands include Peleliu, the Kayangel Islands about 40 km north of Babeldaob and Angaur, 10 km south of Peleliu, which was heavily mined for phosphate first by the Germans and later by the Japanese. Sonsorol, Pulo Anna and Tobi, each under 2.6 km², lie about 290 km to the southwest.

Palau has hundreds of small green islands called the Rock Islands.

Many are shaped like mushrooms. They sit in a turquoise lagoon. The photo shows reef islands in another Pacific country.

A barrier reef encloses a lagoon about 115 kilometers long. Babeldaob, the biggest island, is a volcanic island of rolling hills, grassland and jungle, with mangrove forests along its coast. Its highest point, Ngerchelchuus, is 242 meters.

South of it, more than 300 Rock Islands fill the lagoon. They are coral reefs pushed up out of the sea and deeply undercut at the waterline, and many look like green mushrooms. Some hold lakes of salty water, called marine lakes, linked to the sea by underground channels. It rains about 3,800 millimeters a year on Babeldaob. The photo shows Ulithi, a coral atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia.

The lagoon stretches almost 115 km northeast to southwest. Babeldaob (396 km²) is volcanic, mostly andesite, with three rivers and heavy erosion under about 3,800 mm of rain a year; Ngerchelchuus reaches 242 m. The Rock Islands are uplifted coralline limestone reef, deeply undercut at sea level; the largest rise about 180 m and some hold brackish lakes linked to the lagoon by subterranean channels.

UNESCO's Rock Islands Southern Lagoon (2012) covers 100,200 ha with 445 uninhabited islands, a reef system of over 385 coral species and the world's highest concentration of marine lakes, isolated bodies of seawater whose high endemism keeps yielding new species. The photo, taken for NOAA in 1992, shows Falalop and a second islet on the reef of Ulithi, an atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia, separated by a deep pass between ocean and lagoon.

Dugongs swim in Palau's sea.

Many kinds of sharks live there too. The bird in the big photo is a Palau fruit dove.

UNESCO says the Rock Islands area supports a great variety of plants, birds and sea life, including dugongs and at least 13 kinds of sharks. More than 385 kinds of coral grow on its reefs.

The Palau fruit dove in the main photo was photographed in the Rock Islands. The dugong in this photo was swimming near Marsa Alam, in Egypt.

UNESCO credits the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon with an exceptional variety of habitats in a small area: barrier and fringing reefs, channels, tunnels, caves, arches and marine lakes, sustaining dugong, at least thirteen shark species and over 385 corals, while the harsh limestone land supports numerous endemic and endangered species.

National Geographic (2017) describes bul, a traditional fishing ban that village chiefs declared when fish numbers fell, so stocks could recover. The dugong photo was taken near Marsa Alam, Egypt; the hero photo shows a Palau fruit dove (Ptilinopus pelewensis) in the Rock Islands.

People in Palau speak Palauan and English.

Visitors to Palau sign a promise to the children of Palau to care for nature.

Palauan and English are both official languages. In 2017 National Geographic called tourism a main driver of Palau's economy, with visitors coming for coral atolls, the Rock Islands and Jellyfish Lake.

Since December 2017, every visitor gets a special stamp in their passport called the Palau Pledge, written as a promise to the children of Palau. Visitors sign it, vowing to 'tread lightly, act kindly and explore mindfully'. Palau also has an old custom called bul: long ago, when fish became scarce, village chiefs stopped fishing for a while so the fish could come back.

National Geographic reported in 2017 that visitors averaged almost seven times Palau's population, and that tourism is a primary driver of the economy. On December 7, 2017, Palau began stamping arriving passports with the Palau Pledge, a five-stanza vow to the youth of Palau that every visitor must sign, backed by an in-flight video and stronger enforcement of environmental laws. The Palau Visitors Authority said in April 2026 that every traveler entering Palau must still sign it.

Many of Palau's conservation efforts build on bul, a system of traditional resource management in which village chiefs halted fishing to let stocks replenish. UNESCO notes that Palauans still use the Rock Islands for cultural and recreational purposes under a traditional governance system that remains part of national identity.