This is a list of the world's sovereign states and their dependent territories by area, ranked by total area.

Entries in this list are based on those in the ISO standard ISO 3166-1. Territories that are not integral, such as dependent territories, are listed separately (in italics) or noted as included. Not included in the list are claims to parts of the continent of Antarctica – and entities such as the European Union (4,324,782 km²/1,669,808 sq mi total area) that have some degree of sovereignty but do not consider themselves to be sovereign countries or dependent territories. States with limited recognition that are not listed in the ISO standard ISO 3166-1 are not included, but are noted within the countries they are recognised as part of with areas given.

This list includes three measurements of area:

Data are taken from the United Nations Statistics Division unless otherwise noted.

Dry land redirects here. It may refer to:

Land may refer to:

In music:

People:

As a synonym for a region belonging to a people:

As a geographical place:

As a division of a country:

Other usages:

Area is a quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional surface or shape in the plane. Area can be understood as the amount of material with a given thickness that would be necessary to fashion a model of the shape, or the amount of paint necessary to cover the surface with a single coat. It is the two-dimensional analog of the length of a curve (a one-dimensional concept) or the volume of a solid (a three-dimensional concept).

The area of a shape can be measured by comparing the shape to squares of a fixed size. In the International System of Units (SI), the standard unit of area is the square metre (m²), which is the area of a square whose sides are one metre long. A shape with an area of three square metres would have the same area as three such squares. In mathematics, the unit square is defined to have area one, and the area of any other shape or surface is a dimensionless real number.

There are several well-known formulas for the areas of simple shapes such as triangles, rectangles, and circles. Using these formulas, the area of any polygon can be found by dividing the polygon into triangles. For shapes with curved boundary, calculus is usually required to compute the area. Indeed, the problem of determining the area of plane figures was a major motivation for the historical development of calculus.