How to approach 197 capitals
Learning every capital city in the world is a big list, but it is not a random one. Roughly half the capitals are the country's largest and best-known city — London, Paris, Tokyo, Cairo, Buenos Aires — and most people already know them. The work is in the other half: countries whose capital is a planned city, a compromise, or simply less famous than a rival city. This guide shows you where those traps are, continent by continent, and how to practice so the answers stick.
The quiz above gives you a country and four capital cities to choose from. Our site's list has 197 countries — the 193 United Nations members plus Vatican City, Palestine, Kosovo and Taiwan — and the quizzes accept the capital shown on each country page.
The five kinds of "trap" capital
Almost every capital people get wrong falls into one of these patterns. Learn the pattern and you learn the whole group at once.
1. The planned capital. Some countries built a new capital away from their biggest city, often to be neutral or central. Examples: Brasília (Brazil, not Rio or São Paulo), Canberra (Australia, not Sydney), Ottawa (Canada, not Toronto), Abuja (Nigeria, not Lagos), Islamabad (Pakistan, not Karachi), Naypyidaw (Myanmar, not Yangon), Belmopan (Belize, not Belize City) and Astana (Kazakhstan, not Almaty).
2. The capital that moved recently. Dodoma has been Tanzania's official capital since the 1970s, although Dar es Salaam remains the largest city. Gitega became Burundi's political capital in 2019, replacing Bujumbura. Yamoussoukro is Ivory Coast's official capital; Abidjan is the economic center.
3. The country with more than one capital. Some countries split capital functions between cities. South Africa has three: Pretoria (executive), Cape Town (legislative) and Bloemfontein (judicial). Bolivia's constitutional capital is Sucre, while the government sits in La Paz. The Netherlands' capital is Amsterdam, but the government and parliament are in The Hague. Benin's official capital is Porto-Novo, while Cotonou is the seat of government. Sri Lanka's legislative capital is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, next to Colombo; our quizzes use Colombo.
4. The famous second city. The best-known city is not the capital: Turkey (Ankara, not Istanbul), Switzerland (Bern, not Zurich or Geneva), Morocco (Rabat, not Casablanca), New Zealand (Wellington, not Auckland), Vietnam (Hanoi, not Ho Chi Minh City), Ecuador (Quito, not Guayaquil) and Cameroon (Yaoundé, not Douala).
5. The small-country capital nobody hears about. Pacific and small island nations are where most people run out of answers: Ngerulmud (Palau), Palikir (Micronesia), Funafuti (Tuvalu), Tarawa (Kiribati), Majuro (Marshall Islands) and Yaren (Nauru, which has no official capital; Yaren is the seat of government).
Continent by continent
Europe (46 countries on our list)
Africa (54 countries)
Asia (48 countries)
The Americas and Oceania
Capitals that sound alike
A second source of mistakes is capitals that share a name or a sound. Learn these as deliberate pairs:
| Easily confused | How to tell them apart |
|---|---|
| Kingston (Jamaica) and Kingstown (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) | Jamaica's is the big city; the extra "-town" belongs to the smaller island nation. |
| San José (Costa Rica), San Salvador (El Salvador) and Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) | El Salvador's capital repeats the country's name. Santo Domingo is the Caribbean one. |
| Niamey (Niger), Nouakchott (Mauritania) and N'Djamena (Chad) | Three Sahel capitals starting with N; go west to east — Nouakchott on the Atlantic, Niamey on the Niger River, N'Djamena near Lake Chad. |
| Brazzaville and Kinshasa | The Republic of the Congo's capital is named after an explorer (Brazza); the Democratic Republic's is the much larger city across the river. |
| Georgetown (Guyana) and Victoria (Seychelles) | Both colonial-era names; Guyana is in South America, the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. |
| Bern and Berlin | Switzerland and Germany. Bern is the small, compact one. |
| Malabo (Equatorial Guinea), Bissau (Guinea-Bissau) and Conakry (Guinea) | Three "Guinea" countries, three unrelated capitals — Bissau is the only one that echoes its country's name. |
Saying a pair out loud with its difference ("Kingston big, Kingstown small") is usually all it takes to stop mixing them up.
A study method that works
- Sort before you study. Go through a continent and tick every capital you already know. Most people know 40 to 60 percent. Only the rest go on your study list.
- Learn by pattern, not alphabet. Group your study list using the five trap types above. "Planned capitals" is one idea to remember, not eight separate facts.
- Test both directions. The Country → Capital quiz and the reverse Capital → Country quiz catch different gaps.
- Short, spaced sessions. Ten minutes a day, revisiting yesterday's misses first, beats an hour once a week. That is the spacing effect, one of the most reliable findings in memory research.
- Finish with recall. When multiple choice feels easy, try Name All World Capitals, where you type every capital from memory.
Look up any capital
Every country on the site has its own page with its capital, population, languages and currency. A few that people often look up: Laos, Lithuania, Senegal, Gabon, Cuba, Benin and Tajikistan. For a single printable table of all 197, see the world capitals list.