ISO 3166-1
ISO 3166-1, as part of the
ISO 3166 standard, provides codes for the names of
countries and dependent areas. It was first published in
1974 by the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and defines three different codes for each area:
*
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, a two-letter system with many applications, most notably the
Internet top-level domains (
ccTLD) for countries.
*
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, a three-letter system.
*
ISO 3166-1 numeric, a three-digit numerical system, which is identical to that defined by the
United Nations Statistical Division.
243 countries and territories have formal codes. According to the
Maintenance Agency for ISO 3166 country codes, a country or territory must be listed in the United Nations Terminology Bulletin
Country Names or
Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division. To be listed in the bulletin
Country Names a country or territory must be any of the following:
* a
United Nations member state,
* a member of any of the
UN specialized agencies or
* a party to the Statute of the
International Court of Justice.
A country or territory generally gets new alpha codes if its name changes, whereas a new numeric code is associated with a change of boundaries. Some codes in each series are reserved, for various reasons; obsolete codes may be kept as reserved, borders may be considered likely to change, and some overseas territories have reserved codes of their own.
ISO 3166-1 is not the only standard for
country codes. The
IOC and
FIFA have their own lists (see
List of IOC country codes and
List of FIFA country codes) of three-letter codes which mostly correspond to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes.
The following is a complete ISO 3166-1 encoding code list in alphabetical order by the English short country names officially used by the ISO. The ISO uses country names from United Nations sources [
1], and hence, names such as "Palestinian Territory, Occupied" and "Taiwan, Province of China" reflect the countries' political status within the UN.
The table includes formal codes only. For reserved codes, see
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2#Reserved code elements and
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3#Reserved code elements. ISO 3166-1 does not have reserved numeric codes.
1Serbia and Montenegro no longer exists as a country. The ISO has yet to release the official codes for the successor states and .
Changes to ISO 3166-1 are announced in periodic newsletters, of which 11 have been released since the fifth edition of the standard was issued in 1997:# Published
1998-02-05: change of name for
Samoa, available in
English and
French# Published
1999-10-01: change of name for
Occupied Palestinian Territory, available in
English and
French# Published
2002-02-01: change of alpha-3 Code Element for
Romania, available in
English and
French# Published
2002-05-20: change of name for various countries, available in
English and
French# Published
2002-05-20: change of name and codes for
East Timor, available in
English and
French# Published
2002-11-15: change of name and codes for
Timor-Leste, available in
English and
French# Published
2002-11-15: change of official name of
Comoros, available in
English and
French# Published
2003-07-23: deletion of
Yugoslavia, inclusion of
Serbia and Montenegro, available in
English and
French# Published
2004-02-13: new entry for
Åland Islands, available in
English and
French# Published
2004-04-26: change of name for
Afghanistan and
Åland Islands, available in
English and
French# Published
2006-03-29: new entries for
Guernsey, the
Isle of Man and
Jersey, available in
English and
FrenchInformation on reserved codes taken from "Reserved code elements under ISO 3166-1" published by Secretariat of ISO/TC 46, ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, 2001-02-13, available on request from ISO 3166 MA.
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ISO 3166-2*
ISO 3166-3*
Comparison of IOC, FIFA, and ISO 3166 country codes*
ISO 3166/MA – ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency at the International Organization for Standardization – includes up-to-date lists of two-letter codes.
*
United Nations Statistics Division – Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use – includes three-letter and numeric codes.
* [https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/appendix/appendix-d.html CIA World Factbook – Cross-Reference List of Country Data Codes] (public domain)
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a list of ISO 3166-1 codes (including three-letter and numeric codes), and includes information about changes that have been made over the years.
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an xml document containing country codes and country names in 7 languages.
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CSV-file and website in unicode, containing codes and country names in 30 languages
