Random Country Generator: Country Wheel

How to use it

1. Spin the country wheelPress SPIN, click the wheel or press Space. With 193 slices there is no room for labels, so the result line names the country.
2. Look it up in the tableFind the country in the table below for its capital and region, or ask the room to name the capital before you look.
3. Narrow it down if you need toDelete lines, or paste only the countries of one region from the table, to spin a smaller wheel.

What the country wheel does

• Spins a random country wheel of all 193 UN member states, each with the same chance.
• Works as a country spinner for geography quizzes: spin, then name the capital from the table below.
• Is a random country picker you can narrow: delete the regions you do not want, or paste a shorter list.
• Becomes a full-screen country wheel spinner with Present, for a quiz night on a big screen.

What is on this wheel

Which countries are on the wheel

The wheel holds the 193 member states of the United Nations, one slice each, so each country has a 1 in 193 chance on every spin. Observer states and territories, such as the Holy See, Palestine, Greenland or Puerto Rico, are not on the list. Add them as extra lines if your game needs them.

Country names follow the short forms in common English use, such as Czechia, Eswatini, Türkiye and Côte d'Ivoire. The list is in alphabetical order; the order on the wheel does not change anyone's odds.

Capitals, and the countries with more than one

Most countries have one capital, but a few split the role. South Africa has three: Pretoria for the executive, Cape Town for parliament and Bloemfontein for the courts. Bolivia names Sucre as its constitutional capital while the government sits in La Paz, and Eswatini has Mbabane and Lobamba. The table lists both or all three where that is the case.

Some capitals are less familiar than the largest city: Canberra rather than Sydney, Ottawa rather than Toronto, Ankara rather than Istanbul, Abuja rather than Lagos, Yamoussoukro rather than Abidjan, Naypyidaw rather than Yangon. Sri Lanka's official capital is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, next to Colombo. Nauru has no official capital; government offices are in Yaren. The status of Jerusalem as Israel's capital is disputed, and the table says so.

Regions

The region column uses the United Nations M49 groups: Africa with 54 countries, the Americas with 35, Asia with 47, Europe with 43 and Oceania with 14. M49 puts Russia in Europe and Türkiye, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in Asia, so expect some of those to differ from a school atlas.

To spin one region, copy its countries from the table into the entry box, one per line. A region wheel is also a fair way to split a quiz into rounds: Africa first, then the Americas, and so on.

Games and uses

Name the capital: spin, then give the room ten seconds before anyone checks the table. Flags, languages or famous dishes work the same way, with a phone or an atlas as the judge.

For a cooking night, spin once and cook a dish from that country. For a reading or film challenge, pick a book or film set there. With Remove the winner switched on in Options, a country leaves the wheel after it comes up, so a weekly game never repeats until all 193 have had a turn.