Countries and territories of South America

Every country and territory, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, with flags, maps, facts and a narrated adventure.

10 to explore

Watch Country Argentina Argentina covers most of the southern part of South America. The Andes mountains run down its western side, grassy plains called the Pampas spread across the middle, and windy Patagonia stretches to the far south. INDEC, the national statistics office, estimates that about 46.5 million people lived there in 2026, many of them in and around Buenos Aires.
Watch Country Bolivia Bolivia is a landlocked country in the middle of South America. In the west, the Andes Mountains hold a high, cold plateau with Lake Titicaca and a huge salt flat; in the east, warm lowlands stretch toward the Amazon. It has two capitals, La Paz and Sucre, and about 12.6 million people lived there in 2025.
Watch Country Brazil Brazil covers about half of South America and is the fifth-largest country in the world. It holds most of the Amazon River basin and much of the world's largest rainforest, and about 214 million people lived there in 2026, most of them near the Atlantic coast.
Watch Country Chile Chile stretches about 4,300 kilometers along the west coast of South America, between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, but it averages only about 180 kilometers wide. Its north holds one of the driest deserts on Earth, and its south is cold, wet and full of fjords and ice.
Watch Country Colombia Colombia is in the northwest of South America, with coasts on both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Three ranges of the Andes run through it, and most people live in the cool mountains, where the capital, Bogotá, sits on a high plateau. About 53.4 million people lived there in 2026, according to DANE, the national statistics office.
Watch Country Ecuador Ecuador is a country in northwestern South America, named after the equator, which crosses it. In a small space it holds Pacific beaches, high snowy volcanoes of the Andes, part of the Amazon rainforest and the Galápagos Islands, whose wildlife helped Charles Darwin develop his ideas.
Watch Country Paraguay Paraguay is a landlocked country in the heart of South America. The Paraguay River divides it into a hilly east, where most people live, and the hot, flat Chaco in the west. Guaraní and Spanish are both official languages, and about 7 million people lived there in 2025.
Watch Country Peru Peru is a country on the Pacific coast of South America. It has a dry desert coast, the high Andes mountains and the Amazon rainforest, and about 34 million people lived there in 2025, many of them in the capital, Lima.
Watch Country Uruguay Uruguay is the second-smallest country in South America, between Brazil and Argentina. Its gently rolling grasslands are grazed by cattle and sheep, and almost half of its 3.5 million people live in and around the capital, Montevideo.
Watch Country Venezuela Venezuela is a country on the north coast of South America. It has high Andes mountains, huge grassy plains called the Llanos, the great Orinoco River and flat-topped mountains called tepuis, where Angel Falls drops 979 meters.