Country · Europe
Kosovo
Republic of Kosovo
Kosovo is a territory in Southeast Europe. It covers 10 908 square kilometres. Its capital city is Pristina.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008. About half the countries of the world recognise that and half do not — including Serbia, which Kosovo was part of before. Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations.
Picture credit: Ottffßente (CC0) · Armmus (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Atdhebuja (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Arben Llapashtica (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Arild Vågen (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Kosovo?
Kosovo lies in Southeast Europe, on the continent of Europe.
It sits in the northern half of the world, roughly 4 750 km from the equator.
Kosovo is landlocked: it has no coast at all, so you cannot reach the sea without crossing another country.
It shares a border with 4 countries: Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.
How big is Kosovo?
Kosovo covers 10 908 square kilometres.
That is about 4.2 times the size of Luxembourg.
Who lives in Kosovo?
People here speak Albanian and Serbian.
They pay with the Euro (€).
The land of Kosovo
Because it is landlocked, anything that comes by ship has to cross one of its 4 neighbours to get here.
It lies between the tropics and the poles, which is the single biggest reason its weather is the way it is.
What makes Kosovo different?
Websites from here often end in .xk.
Kosovo and the rest of the world
It takes up about 0.01 % of all the land that countries stand on.
Kosovo and its neighbours
Serbia, its largest neighbour, is about 8.1 times bigger.
A country, or a territory?
Kosovo is not an independent country but a territory. It has its own name, its own borders and often its own laws, but another country speaks for it abroad — it holds no seat of its own at the United Nations, for instance.
That is more common than it sounds. There are dozens of such places around the world: some sit far from the country they belong to, some right beside it. A few govern themselves almost completely and hand over only defence and foreign policy; others are held more closely. How much a territory decides for itself is settled case by case, never by one rule.
On this site territories get a page of their own, because children look them up and because other pages link to them. They are left out of the record lists, though: those rank only members of the United Nations, so that a ranking never mixes countries with places belonging to somebody else.
Its nearest neighbour by land is Albania.
How big is Kosovo compared with the United States?
- The United States is about 859 times as big as Kosovo: 9 372 610 km² against 10 908 km².
- The United Kingdom is about 22 times as big as Kosovo: 242 900 km² against 10 908 km².
Questions children ask
What is the capital of Kosovo?
The capital of Kosovo is Pristina.
Which countries border Kosovo?
Kosovo borders Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — 4 neighbours in total.
How big is Kosovo?
Kosovo covers 10 908 square kilometres. That is about 4.2 times the size of Luxembourg.
Which continent is Kosovo in?
Kosovo is in Europe, in the part called Southeast Europe.
Where these numbers come from
Borders and outlines: Natural Earth. Names, capitals, areas, languages and currencies: ISO 3166 data (world-countries). Population: World Bank, 2018. Every derived figure on this page (ranks, density, distance from the equator) is calculated from those values.
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