Panama

Panama is a thin country.

It joins North America and South America like a bridge. The sea is on both sides. Big ships cross Panama on a canal. The capital is Panama City.

Panama is a country in Central America shaped like a long, wiggly S. It sits on the Isthmus of Panama, a narrow bridge of land that connects North America and South America. The Caribbean Sea lies to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south.

Panama is famous for the Panama Canal, a waterway that cuts through the middle of the country so ships can travel between the two oceans. Its capital, Panama City, stands on the Pacific coast just east of the canal. About 4.6 million people lived in Panama in 2025, and Spanish is the official language.

Panama stretches in an elongated S across the Isthmus of Panama, between the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. Its Caribbean coastline runs for some 1,290 km and its Pacific coastline for some 1,700 km, yet a straight line from the Costa Rican border to the Colombian border is only about 770 km. At its narrowest the isthmus is about 50 km across, and the canal crosses a section nearly as narrow.

Britannica calls Panama one of the world's most strategic transportation hubs because of the canal, which Panama has controlled entirely since the United States gave up jurisdiction on December 31, 1999. Panama City, the capital, is a commercial, financial and logistics center for Latin America. The World Bank put the population at 4,571,189 in 2025; Spanish is the official language and the balboa is the monetary unit, used alongside the United States dollar.

The Panama Canal is a road of water for ships.

Water steps called locks lift the ships up and down. A long bridge crosses the canal. Panama City has very tall buildings.

The Panama Canal is about 80 kilometers long. Ships cannot simply float across, because the middle of the canal is a lake 26 meters above the sea. So the canal uses locks: giant chambers with gates that fill with water and lift a ship up like an elevator, then lower it on the other side. The water comes from Gatun Lake and flows into the locks by gravity.

Between 13,000 and 14,000 ships use the canal every year. Near Panama City, the Bridge of the Americas, opened in 1962, carries a road high over the canal's Pacific entrance. On the Caribbean coast, old Spanish forts at Portobelo and San Lorenzo once guarded the trade route to Spain.

The Panama Canal Authority describes a waterway of about 80 km whose locks act as water lifts, raising ships from sea level to Gatun Lake, 26 m above sea level, and lowering them again. Each set of locks takes the name of the town where it was built: Gatún on the Atlantic side, Pedro Miguel and Miraflores on the Pacific. The original chambers are 33.53 m wide and 304.8 m long, and the water that fills them drains from Gatun Lake by gravity. The narrowest stretch, the Culebra Cut, runs about 13.7 km through rock of the Cordillera Central. New, larger locks, Agua Clara and Cocolí, opened on June 26, 2016. Between 13,000 and 14,000 ships transit each year.

The Bridge of the Americas (1962) spans the Pacific entrance. UNESCO lists the fortifications of Portobelo and San Lorenzo (1980), Spanish military architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries that protected the Caribbean ends of the route across the isthmus; they have been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2012.

Panama is warm all year.

It has rainforests, beaches and coral reefs. More than 1,600 islands lie off its coasts. Its tallest mountain is an old volcano.

Mountains run along almost the whole length of Panama. Its highest peak, Volcán Barú, is an inactive volcano 3,475 meters tall. It is warm all year: on both coasts, the average temperature of the coldest month rarely drops below 26 °C.

The Caribbean side gets rain almost all year and is covered in rainforest. The Pacific side has a dry season, from January to April in Chiriquí province, and more grassy savanna. Panama also has mangrove swamps, coral reefs and more than 1,600 islands. Coiba, the largest, is a national park where UNESCO counts 760 kinds of sea fish.

A central spine of mountains, the Tabasará Mountains (Cordillera Central) in the west and the Cordillera de San Blas in the east, divides Panama into Caribbean- and Pacific-facing slopes; the lower saddle between them is where the canal was built. The highest peak, Barú (Chiriquí), is an inactive volcano 3,475 m high. Facing the trade winds, the Caribbean slopes receive about twice as much rain as the Pacific slopes, 1,500–3,550 mm a year against 1,140–2,290 mm, and carry tropical rainforest, while savannas cover the seasonally dry Pacific lowlands.

National parks and reserves occupy about one-sixth of the land. Darién National Park (UNESCO, 1981), about 575,000 ha, is Panama's largest protected area and runs along almost the whole border with Colombia; it holds the most extensive lowland rainforest on Central America's Pacific coast. Coiba National Park (UNESCO, 2005) protects Coiba and 38 smaller islands; UNESCO records 760 species of marine fishes, 33 of sharks and 20 of whales and dolphins there.

Sloths hang from the trees in Panama.

Monkeys and jaguars live in the forests. A huge eagle called the harpy eagle lives there too. Sea turtles lay eggs on the beaches.

Panama's land bridge joined two continents, and animals walked across it. That is why sloths, anteaters and armadillos, which came from South America, now live alongside jaguars, tapirs and deer, which came from North America. Several kinds of sea turtle lay their eggs on Panama's beaches, and it has a huge number of bird species.

In the Darién rainforest live giant anteaters, Central American tapirs, jaguars and an important population of harpy eagles, one of the biggest eagles in the world. The Panamanian golden frog is native to Panama's forests, but none has been seen in the wild since 2009, and zoos now care for golden frogs.

Britannica explains Panama's rich fauna by its ancient role as a land bridge: sloths, anteaters and armadillos derive from South America, while jaguars, tapirs and deer came originally from North America. Several species of giant sea turtle nest on its beaches, and few comparable areas have more bird species, resident and migratory. UNESCO records 169 mammal species and more than 530 bird species in Darién National Park, including the critically endangered brown-headed spider monkey, the endangered Central American tapir, the vulnerable giant anteater and a major population of the near-threatened harpy eagle.

The Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki), native to streams on the slopes of west-central Panama, is classed as critically endangered. The Smithsonian's National Zoo reports that chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease, wiped out populations such as those at El Copé in late 2004, and no golden frog has been seen in the wild since 2009; zoos keep an assurance population while researchers look for ways to fight the fungus.

About 4.6 million people live in Panama.

Most people speak Spanish. Some speak their own Indigenous languages. Rice, beans and corn are favorite foods. Guna women sew bright pictures called molas.

About 4.6 million people lived in Panama in 2025. Most have mixed Indigenous and European ancestors, and many Afro-Panamanians descend from Caribbean families who came to build the canal. In the 2023 census, about 17 out of every 100 people belonged to one of eight Indigenous peoples, such as the Ngäbe, Guna and Emberá.

Spanish is the official language, and many people also learn English at school. Rice, beans and corn are everyday foods, and arroz con pollo and sancocho, both chicken dishes, are favorites. Guna women make bright molas, cloth panels decorated with layers of cut fabric.

People of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry form the largest part of the population. Afro-Panamanians, descended from Africans brought in the colonial period and from later Caribbean migrants, many of whom came to build the canal, live mainly in cities, on the Caribbean coast, in Darién and along the canal corridor. The 2023 census counted about 698,000 Indigenous people, roughly 17 percent of the total, in eight recognized peoples: the Ngäbe, Buglé, Guna, Emberá, Wounaan, Naso Tjër Di, Bribri and Bokota, many living in legally recognized territories called comarcas. Panama is also home to Chinese, South Asian and Middle Eastern communities and a long-standing Jewish community.

Spanish is official and spoken by the great majority; English is widely taught. Rice, beans and corn are staples, flavored with chiles and the herb culantro, and arroz con pollo and sancocho are national favorites. Guna women's molas use reverse appliqué, and the national dance, the tamborito, has couples moving to drumbeats. More than half the population lives near the canal.