Sweden has the world’s largest population of islands, with more than 260,000 islands recorded in its official island statistics.
Most of Sweden’s islands are small and uninhabited, scattered along the Baltic Sea coast and across inland lakes. The country’s total depends on the statistical definition of an island, including the minimum land area and whether tiny skerries are counted.
Stockholm is built across islands and mainland shores, with the Stockholm archipelago extending eastward into the Baltic Sea. Gothenburg and other coastal communities also have extensive island landscapes.
Indonesia and the Philippines are better known for large tropical archipelagos, but Sweden’s count is higher because it includes thousands of very small islands, rocks, and lake islands. This makes comparisons especially dependent on consistent counting methods.