Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

World regions according to UN

About this data

World regions according to UN
Regions defined by the United Nations, which are used across the UN including UN WPP.
Source
United Nations, Statistics Division – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 1, 2023
Date range
2023–2023

Related research and writing

Definitions of world regions

Our World in Data team

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

United Nations, Statistics Division – Standard country or area codes for statistical use (M49)

The list of geographic regions presents the composition of geographical regions used by the Statistics Division in its publications and databases. Each country or area is shown in one region only. These geographic regions are based on continental regions; which are further subdivided into sub-regions and intermediary regions drawn as to obtain greater homogeneity in sizes of population, demographic circumstances and accuracy of demographic statistics.

The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations.

Retrieved on
August 22, 2025
Retrieved from
https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/

The list of geographic regions presents the composition of geographical regions used by the Statistics Division in its publications and databases. Each country or area is shown in one region only. These geographic regions are based on continental regions; which are further subdivided into sub-regions and intermediary regions drawn as to obtain greater homogeneity in sizes of population, demographic circumstances and accuracy of demographic statistics.

The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations.

Retrieved on
August 22, 2025
Retrieved from
https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: World regions according to UN”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from United Nations, Statistics Division. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

United Nations, Statistics Division – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

United Nations, Statistics Division – processed by Our World in Data. “World regions according to UN” [dataset]. United Nations, Statistics Division, “Standard country or area codes for statistical use (M49)” [original data]. Retrieved April 6, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

Download

Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

Download full data

Includes all entities and time points

Download displayed data

Includes only the entities and time points currently visible in the chart

Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-regions-according-to-un.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear