Countries
Key facts
- Capital
- Port Moresby
- Region
- Oceania, Melanesia
- Population
- 10,762,817 (2025)
- Area
- 462,840 km²
- Currency
- Papua New Guinean kina (PGK)
- Languages
- English, Hiri Motu, Motu, Tok Pisin
- Calling code
- +675
- Internet domain
- .pg
- ISO codes
- PG, PNG, 598
- Time zone
- UTC+10:00 to UTC+11:00
- United Nations
- Member state
- Postal code pattern
- ### (# = digit, @ = letter)
Land and position
Papua New Guinea covers about 462,840 square kilometres. By area it ranks 56th among the 250 countries and territories on this site. It is a little smaller than Cameroon and a little larger than Sweden. It shares a land border with 1 neighbour: Indonesia. Its centre lies at about 6° south, 147° east, in the southern hemisphere.
Neighbours
People
About 10.8 million people live in Papua New Guinea (World Bank, 2025). That makes it the 92nd most populous of the 246 places on this site with a figure, with about 0.13 percent of the world's people. On average there are 23 people to each square kilometre. About 16 percent of people live in towns and cities (World Bank, 2025). A baby born there can expect to live about 66 years (World Bank, 2024). Languages listed for it: English, Hiri Motu, Motu, Tok Pisin. A person from Papua New Guinea is called Papua New Guinean.
Money and economy
The currency is the Papua New Guinean kina (code PGK, symbol K). The World Bank puts the size of its economy (GDP) at about US$ 32.5 billion (2025), which is about US$ 3,020 for each person (2025).
Time
Papua New Guinea spans 2 time zone areas, from UTC+10:00 to UTC+11:00. Clocks stay the same all year: there is no daylight saving time.
Time now in Port Moresby: loading
Offsets are for January 2026. See Time Zones for a converter.
Largest cities
| City | People |
|---|---|
| Port Moresby | 283,733 |
| Lae | 76,255 |
| Arawa | 40,266 |
| Mount Hagen | 33,623 |
| Popondetta | 28,198 |
| Madang | 27,419 |
City figures are from GeoNames and count the city itself, not the wider urban area. They can be some years old, so use them to see the order of size.
More in Melanesia
Fiji, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu. See the whole region.
Figures were collected on 11 November 2026 from the World Bank, GeoNames and the open countries data set. See About and data sources. Borders and names follow those sources and do not express any view on disputed territory.