Country · Oceania
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a territory in Melanesia. About 284 thousand people live there, in an area of 18 575 square kilometres. Its capital city is Nouméa.
Where is New Caledonia?
New Caledonia lies in Melanesia, on the continent of Oceania.
It sits in the southern half of the world, roughly 2 393 km from the equator.
Its coastline is about 2 254 km long.
It has no land neighbours — every border it has is with the sea.
How big is New Caledonia?
New Caledonia covers 18 575 square kilometres.
That is about 7.2 times the size of Luxembourg.
Spread everybody out evenly and you get about 15.3 people on every square kilometre.
That is emptier than the world average of roughly 60 people per square kilometre.
Who lives in New Caledonia?
About 284 thousand people live in New Caledonia.
People here speak French.
They pay with the CFP franc (₣).
On average, people born here can expect to live about 73 years.
The land of New Caledonia
Its coast runs for about 2 254 km. Walking it end to end, at twenty kilometres a day, would take roughly 113 days.
It lies inside the tropics, which is the single biggest reason its weather is the way it is.
What makes New Caledonia different?
Websites from here often end in .nc.
New Caledonia and the rest of the world
Fewer than one person in every thousand on Earth lives in New Caledonia.
It takes up about 0.01 % of all the land that countries stand on.
A country, or a territory?
New Caledonia 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.
Questions children ask
What is the capital of New Caledonia?
The capital of New Caledonia is Nouméa. It is the city where the country's government works from.
How many people live in New Caledonia?
About 284 thousand people live in New Caledonia. (Source: World Bank, 2018.)
How big is New Caledonia?
New Caledonia covers 18 575 square kilometres. That is about 7.2 times the size of Luxembourg.
Which continent is New Caledonia in?
New Caledonia is in Oceania, in the part called Melanesia.
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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