50 Geography Trivia Questions and Answers, From Capitals to Coastlines

Geography is the great equalizer at a quiz night. It rewards whoever stared at an atlas as a kid far more than whoever has actually been places, and it punishes one assumption above all others: that a country's biggest city must be its capital. That single mistake has cost more teams more points than anything else in trivia.

Here are 50 geography trivia questions and answers, sorted so a group starts together and finishes arguing. Several of these have quietly changed in the last few years and most published lists have not caught up. Where the answer is genuinely disputed, we say so instead of pretending.

Warm-up (nobody sits this round out)

1. What is the largest country in the world by area?
Answer: Russia. It covers more surface area than the dwarf planet Pluto.

2. Which ocean lies between Europe and North America?
Answer: The Atlantic.

3. What is the capital of Canada?
Answer: Ottawa. Not Toronto, which is the country's biggest city.

4. Which continent is the Sahara on?
Answer: Africa.

5. Which mountain range is usually drawn as the dividing line between Europe and Asia?
Answer: The Urals.

6. What is the capital of Japan?
Answer: Tokyo.

7. Which country is shaped like a boot?
Answer: Italy.

8. How tall is Mount Everest?
Answer: 8,848.86 metres, or 29,031.7 feet. Nepal and China agreed on that figure in a joint survey announced in December 2020. If someone answers 8,848, they learned it before then.

9. Which body of water is salty enough that you float in it without trying?
Answer: The Dead Sea, which is technically a lake.

10. What is the capital of Brazil?
Answer: Brasilia. It was built from open scrubland and took over from Rio de Janeiro in 1960.

11. Which river flows through Egypt to the Mediterranean?
Answer: The Nile.

12. Which US state borders only one other state?
Answer: Maine, which touches only New Hampshire.

Capital cities (where half the room loses its lead)

13. What is the capital of Turkey?
Answer: Ankara. Istanbul is bigger, older, and more famous, and it is still not the capital.

14. What is the capital of Switzerland?
Answer: Bern, sort of. The Swiss constitution never names a capital at all, so Bern is officially the federal city. Say Bern and you are right.

15. What is the capital of New Zealand?
Answer: Wellington, not Auckland. It is also the southernmost capital of any sovereign country.

16. What is the capital of Indonesia?
Answer: Jakarta. This is the one to know. Indonesia has been building a new capital called Nusantara on Borneo, and a lot of quiz lists updated early. In May 2026 Indonesia's Constitutional Court reaffirmed that Jakarta keeps the title until a presidential decree formally hands it over, and no such decree has been issued. Jakarta is still the answer.

17. What is the capital of Myanmar?
Answer: Naypyidaw. The government moved there from Yangon in 2005, into a purpose-built city with famously empty highways.

18. How many capitals does South Africa have?
Answer: Three. Pretoria is the executive capital, Cape Town the legislative one, and Bloemfontein the judicial one.

19. What is the capital of Nigeria?
Answer: Abuja. Lagos held it until 1991.

20. What is the capital of Morocco?
Answer: Rabat, not Casablanca.

21. What is the capital of Kazakhstan?
Answer: Astana. It was renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019 and changed back to Astana in 2022, so the year a list was written tells you which answer it gives.

22. What is the capital of Bolivia?
Answer: Both Sucre and La Paz, depending on how you ask. Sucre is the constitutional capital, La Paz is the seat of government and sits around 3,600 metres up, which makes it the highest de facto capital on Earth.

Physical geography (rivers, deserts, and very deep holes)

23. What is the largest desert in the world?
Answer: Antarctica. A desert is defined by how little precipitation it gets, not by heat or sand. The Sahara is the largest hot desert, which is a different question.

24. What is the deepest known point in the ocean?
Answer: Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench, roughly 10,935 metres down. Everest would fit inside it with room to spare.

25. What is the largest island in the world?
Answer: Greenland. Australia is bigger but gets classified as a continent, which is the only reason Greenland wins.

26. What is the largest lake in the world by surface area?
Answer: The Caspian Sea. The name is a leftover from its salinity, not its status.

27. What is the deepest lake in the world?
Answer: Lake Baikal in Siberia, about 1,642 metres deep. It holds roughly a fifth of all the unfrozen fresh surface water on the planet.

28. What is the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world?
Answer: Angel Falls in Venezuela, at 979 metres. Much of the water turns to mist before it reaches the bottom.

29. Which country has more lakes than the rest of the world combined?
Answer: Canada.

30. What is the longest mountain range on land?
Answer: The Andes, running about 7,000 kilometres down South America. The mid-ocean ridge is far longer but almost entirely underwater.

31. Which strait separates Asia from North America?
Answer: The Bering Strait, about 82 kilometres wide at its narrowest.

32. Which country holds the largest share of the Amazon rainforest?
Answer: Brazil, with roughly 60 percent of it.

33. What is the Ring of Fire?
Answer: The horseshoe of volcanoes and fault lines around the Pacific basin. Most of the world's active volcanoes and a large majority of its earthquakes happen along it.

34. What is the largest living structure on Earth?
Answer: The Great Barrier Reef, off Queensland. It is big enough to pick out from orbit.

Borders, flags, and lines on the map

35. Which countries border the most other countries?
Answer: China and Russia, tied at 14 each.

36. Which two countries are doubly landlocked?
Answer: Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan. Both are landlocked, and every country they touch is landlocked too.

37. Which national flag is not a rectangle?
Answer: Nepal's. It is two stacked pennants, and it is the only one.

38. Which country spans the most time zones?
Answer: France, with 12, once you count its overseas territories. Russia has 11 and holds the record for a single connected landmass.

39. How many countries does the equator pass through?
Answer: 13.

40. How many member states does the United Nations have?
Answer: 193, plus two permanent observers, the Holy See and Palestine. That is why you see both 193 and 195 quoted as the number of countries.

41. Which African country successfully resisted European colonization?
Answer: Ethiopia, which beat back an Italian invasion at Adwa in 1896. Liberia is the other name that comes up, though its founding story is more complicated.

42. What is the line of latitude at roughly 23.5 degrees north called?
Answer: The Tropic of Cancer.

43. Which major city sits on two continents?
Answer: Istanbul, split between Europe and Asia by the Bosphorus.

Hard round (this is the part people screenshot)

44. What is the longest river in the world?
Answer: The Nile, at about 6,650 kilometres, is the reference answer used by Guinness World Records and Britannica. It is also genuinely contested. Move the Amazon's accepted source further upstream, as some researchers argue you should, and the Amazon comes out longer. Expeditions have been mapping it specifically to settle the fight. Say the Nile at a friendly quiz, and expect a challenge at a serious one.

45. What is the tallest building in the world?
Answer: The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, 828 metres, and it has held the title since 2010. Not for much longer, though. The Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia passed its 100th floor in 2026 and is aiming to clear 1,000 metres.

46. Which country has the longest coastline?
Answer: Canada, at over 200,000 kilometres once you count every island.

47. What is the newest country recognized by the United Nations?
Answer: South Sudan, which joined in 2011.

48. Which country lies in all four hemispheres?
Answer: Kiribati. Its islands straddle both the equator and the 180th meridian.

49. What is Point Nemo?
Answer: The spot in the South Pacific farthest from any land, about 2,700 kilometres from the nearest coast. When the International Space Station passes overhead, the closest humans to anyone at Point Nemo are in orbit rather than on the planet.

50. Which two countries share the longest land border?
Answer: The United States and Canada, at roughly 8,890 kilometres.

Keeping score

Out of 50: anything above 38 is genuinely strong, 26 to 38 is a respectable bar-trivia showing, and under 20 usually means the capitals round ate you alive. Almost nobody gets Bolivia and Kazakhstan in the same night.

If you want more rounds like this, we have full sets for science, history, movies, music, and sports, plus a general knowledge set that runs easy to brutal. Building a whole evening around one topic? Start with the theme ideas and the host guide. And if the capital cities embarrassed you, here is how to actually get better.

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