Random country generator

Every draw starts from a list: the countries of the area chosen, from the whole world down to one sub-region. Any that are unticked, or already drawn and left out, come off it. A tap asks the browser's cryptographic random source for a whole number, and that number becomes a place in the list. Nothing random happens before the tap, and the number owes nothing to timing or to where the tap lands.

Turning that number into a place takes some care. The source gives 32-bit whole numbers, and a list of 195 does not divide their range evenly, so the plain remainder would favour the first countries very slightly. The picker throws away the few numbers above the last full multiple of the list's length and asks again. That method, rejection sampling, leaves no country ahead of another.

Put simply, a pick here is a fair draw from a fixed list. That list holds the states the United Nations names as members or observers, narrowed to any region, sub-region or EU chosen and to the countries still ticked. One tap takes a number from a cryptographic generator built into the browser, rejection sampling keeps it even, and the number names the country. Every country left in the list has an equal chance, which the result card shows as 1 in the size of the draw. The wheel acts this out afterwards. Several countries at once come from a fair shuffle, so none appears twice in one draw, and earlier results count only if drawn countries are left out.

The draw holds the 193 member states on the United Nations' list and its 2 non-member observer States, the Holy See and the State of Palestine. The flag quiz uses the same 195 and explains how the UN's two lists add up to that number.

Some places that people call countries stay out. Kosovo and Taiwan are neither UN members nor observer States. Territories that are not states in their own right, such as Greenland, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong, are left out, and so are the Cook Islands and Niue. Lists that count those two reach 197, which is why other country lists give a different total.

The names follow the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (PCGN), whose "Country names" list sets the short forms for British official use. So the picker shows Ivory Coast, East Timor, Czechia and Turkey, and the two observers appear as Vatican City and Palestine. Naoero is the name Nauru took in 2026. The PCGN list also has an entry for Kosovo, which brings it to 196.

The draw follows the UN's lists, not the UK's own recognition of states. The Prime Minister's statement of 21 September 2025 announced that the UK formally recognises the State of Palestine, which was already a UN observer State before that. Kosovo stays out despite its PCGN entry, because it holds neither status at the UN. Being in the draw or out of it says nothing about any place's status.

Africa is the largest region in the draw with 54 states, Oceania the smallest with 14. The regions are those of UN M49, the UN Statistics Division's coding standard for statistics. Each one splits into smaller areas, and the Draw from menu lists all 22 of them under their region, each with its count.

M49 keeps the Americas together as one region. Its sub-region Northern America holds only Canada and the United States, so Mexico sits in Central America. Latin America and the Caribbean gathers the other 33, and South America alone has 12. Sub-Saharan Africa (48) works the same way, joining Eastern Africa, Middle Africa, Southern Africa and Western Africa, and both groups are menu options as well as their parts.

A few placements surprise people. Russia counts in full as Eastern Europe, Kazakhstan as Central Asia, and Egypt and Sudan as Northern Africa. Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Israel share Western Asia with Cyprus, so none of them comes up when Europe is chosen.

The European Union option draws from its 27 member states, as the EU lists them on its "EU countries" pages, each with an equal chance of 3.7%. Cyprus shows the difference best. It has been an EU member since 2004 and is in the EU draw, yet M49 files it under Western Asia, so a Europe draw never gives it.

The wheel pictures a draw that has already happened. When Spin the wheel is tapped, the country is chosen first, in the way described above. Only then does the spinner turn: 6 whole turns over about 4.2 seconds, slowing down before it settles. It always stops well inside the chosen slice, never on a line between two countries, so the pointer cannot look undecided.

Only countries still in the draw get a slice; unticked and left-out countries are not on the wheel at all. Names are written on the slices while there are no more than 36 of them, so the Americas and Oceania, every sub-region and the EU show names. With every country ticked, the whole world, Africa, Asia and Europe have too many slices for text, so their slices carry colours only, and the result card names the country.

The slices go round in the order of the countries' two-letter ISO codes, not from A to Z, so neighbours on the wheel are rarely neighbours in the alphabet. Where a slice sits makes no difference to its chance, since the pick is made before the turning starts.

On a device set to reduce motion, the wheel does not turn at all and the result shows at once. The odds stay the same, because the animation plays no part in the pick.

Yes. The "Several" mode draws from 1 to 50 countries in one go, and no country appears twice in the same draw. It shuffles the draw fairly, by the Fisher and Yates method, and takes the first ones of the shuffle. Every set of countries is then as likely as any other, and so is every order.

Asking for more countries than the draw holds shows all of them, with a note saying so. Each country's chance of being among the picks grows with the number drawn: 5 from Europe's 44 give each European state a chance of 11.36% of making the list.

Between draws it is different. Each spin, and each new list, starts again from the full draw, so a country can come up again. The option "Leave drawn countries out of the next draws" changes that for the wheel and for several at once. Each country drawn then stays out until "Put them back" returns them all, and a counter shows how many are out. It is off at first.

With every country kept in, repeats come sooner than most people expect. Over ten spins of the whole world, the chance of at least one country showing twice is 21%, and from 17 spins on a repeat is more likely than not. This is the birthday problem: in a room of just 23 people, the odds already favour two of them sharing a birthday.

The "For a group" mode deals countries to people. Names go in one per line, up to 50, and each is cut to 40 characters. No country goes to two people, and the names stay on the page: they are never sent, saved or put in the link.

The Countries each menu sets how many each person gets, from 1 to 10, or "Share out all". With a number, everyone gets exactly that many, as far as the draw allows. For example, 6 names asking for 10 each from Europe's 44 get 7 each, and the 2 left are listed as not dealt.

"Share out all" hands out the whole draw. Everyone gets the same number, and the countries left over go one each to people chosen at random, never by their place in the list. With 4 names sharing all 195, each person gets 48 and 3 of them get one more.

A football sweepstake needs the teams in a tournament, which the picker does not know. Its list is the UN's, and England, Scotland and Wales, which play as separate teams, are not separate UN members. Unticking countries in the panel can cut it down to the qualified nations, though the United Kingdom appears there only once.

In Great Britain, section 14 of the Gambling Act 2005 defines a lottery by three things. People pay to take part, prizes are allocated, and the allocation relies wholly on chance. A draw that hands out countries for fun, with no payment and no prize, has neither of the first two. Northern Ireland has its own law.

Where money changes hands, the Gambling Commission's guidance "How to run a lottery with people you work with" describes a work lottery. Everyone works at the same premises, no profit is made, tickets cost the same and are sold only at the workplace, and nothing rolls over. "You can't sell tickets online, via email or over the telephone", it says, and the draw "can't be done online". Its own example reads: "You could run an office sweepstake for the Grand National without a licence." The picker takes no entries and handles no money.

A drawn country can start a holiday idea, but the pick knows nothing about safety, cost, visas or the season. Every state in the draw can come up, whatever the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) currently says about it.

The FCDO's page about its travel advice explains that it "sometimes formally advises British people against 'all but essential travel' or 'all travel' to a particular country". On its maps, red marks the areas where it advises against all travel. Amber marks those where it advises against all but essential travel, so advice can cover a whole country or only part of it.

Each country page of the FCDO's foreign travel advice shows when it was updated and that it is still current, and offers email alerts. Advice changes often, so this page names no country's current level. Vatican City has no page of its own there; the Italy page covers it. The FCDO also warns: "Your travel insurance could be invalidated if you travel against advice from FCDO."

Countries already visited, or ruled out for any reason, can be unticked in the "Countries in the draw" panel, which also has a search box. The link keeps that choice as two-letter codes, so a saved or shared link opens the same shortlist.

The Department for Education's national curriculum in England builds up the world map stage by stage. At key stage 1, pupils "name and locate the world's 7 continents and 5 oceans". At key stage 2 they "locate the world's countries, using maps to focus on Europe (including the location of Russia) and North and South America". Key stage 3 extends this to Africa, Russia, Asia, including China and India, and the Middle East.

The picker's regions are not the curriculum's continents. M49 has 5 regions: the Americas count as one, Oceania stands where Australia would, and Antarctica, which has no state, plays no part in the draw. A Europe draw or one of the American sub-regions still matches the key stage 2 focus, and Russia sits in Eastern Europe, so it turns up in a Europe draw.

A drawn country can start many lessons and games, at home or in class, such as these.

• A country of the week, found on a map and followed in the news.
• A dish from the drawn country, cooked at home or described in class.
• A country for each pupil's project, shared out by name so no two pupils get the same one.
• The flag drawn from memory, then checked against the result card.
• A guessing game: someone describes the drawn country and the others name it.

"Show flags" is on at first. With it off, the results show names only, so the same draw works with or without flags. A class can then place each country on a map before anyone sees its flag.

A single pick shows the flag, the name, the region and sub-region, and the day the country joined the UN. That is the date of admission on the UN's Member States page: 24 October 1945 for the United Kingdom. Of the 195, 49 carry a 1945 date, and the newest member is South Sudan, admitted on 14 July 2011.

For the two observers, the card says instead that each is a UN observer State, not a member. EU members also show the year they joined, as the EU gives it: France 1958, Ireland 1973. The United Kingdom shows no EU year, since the card lists current members only.

The last line gives the chance of that pick: 1 in the number of countries left in the draw at that moment. That is 1 in 195 for the whole world and 1 in 44 for Europe, and the odds shorten as countries are unticked or left out.

The card shows no capital, population, currency, language or map. Some generators fill in such facts automatically, at times with AI and at times wrongly. This one shows only what the UN and the EU publish, so every line can be checked against their lists.

Copy result puts a short text and the link on the clipboard, and the Copy link button under the tool copies only the settings. A shared link opens the same settings, not the same result, since every draw is new. Nothing is stored in the browser, and no account is needed.