Pacific Ocean countries
The 41 countries with a Pacific coast, around the Ring of Fire from Chile to New Zealand, counting its seas off East Asia, and the island nations scattered across it.
41 countriesAs of September 2026Short notes, not sourcedSuggest a correction
The Pacific is the largest and deepest ocean, about 165 million km², bigger than all the land on Earth put together, and covering about a third of the planet’s surface. Its deepest point, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, is about 10,900 m down. Magellan named it the peaceful sea in 1520, after a calm crossing.
Around its edge runs the Ring of Fire, a chain of volcanoes and ocean trenches where plates meet, and where most of the world’s large earthquakes happen. The countries around it, the Pacific Rim, include the world’s two biggest economies, and scattered across it are thousands of islands settled by Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian voyagers long before Europeans arrived.
The Americas13
United StatesIts Pacific coast runs from California to Alaska, and Hawaii lies in the middle of the ocean.
El SalvadorThe only Central American country with no Caribbean coast.
HondurasIts Pacific coast is only a short stretch on the Gulf of Fonseca.
ColombiaHas coasts on both the Pacific and the Caribbean, the only South American country that does.
EcuadorThe Galápagos Islands, about 1,000 km offshore, are Ecuador’s.
ChileIts whole western edge, over 4,000 km long, is Pacific coast, and Easter Island is Chilean too.
East and Southeast Asia14
RussiaIts Pacific coast, from Vladivostok to Kamchatka, faces the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.
ChinaFaces the Yellow, East China and South China Seas.
CambodiaOn the Gulf of Thailand.
ThailandIts Gulf of Thailand coast counts as Pacific, and its Andaman Sea coast as Indian Ocean.
IndonesiaHas both Pacific and Indian Ocean coasts.
Oceania14
Close calls
Singapore
Singapore sits where the Strait of Malacca, leading to the Indian Ocean, meets the South China Sea, leading to the Pacific. The Grid counts it for neither.
Bolivia
Bolivia had a Pacific coast until it lost it to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–84), and has been landlocked ever since. It still keeps a navy on Lake Titicaca.
Territories
Much of the Pacific’s island world isn’t independent: French Polynesia and New Caledonia are French, Guam and American Samoa American, and the Cook Islands and Niue are self-governing in free association with New Zealand.
More country lists
- Amazon rainforest countries
- Andean countries
- Arab League member states
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