Does a country count if I was only there for a few hours?

Yes, on every major list. The UN list doesn’t define a visit at all, and the Travelers’ Century Club counts even a port of call or a fuel stop if you set foot in the territory. Some travelers add their own minimum, such as one night, but that’s a personal rule.

Should I count the country I live in?

Most people do, and every list includes it. If you want a number that only reflects travel, keep your home country on the list but mark it as "lived" rather than "visited".

Do I need proof of every country?

Not for yourself. For the Travelers’ Century Club, membership runs mainly on the honor system, though the club says it may ask for proof of a visit. Passports, dated photos and bookings are the easiest evidence to keep.

How to Count the Countries You've Visited

To count the countries you've visited, pick one list to count against (most people use the 193 UN member states), decide what counts as a visit, and apply that rule the same way every time. The rule most travelers use: a country counts once you've set foot on its ground, however briefly, and never from a plane window. After that it's bookkeeping. Go through your passports, photos and old bookings, and write each country down once.

Step 1: choose your list

There's no single official list of countries for travelers. These are the four people use most:

List	How many	What it adds
UN member states	193	Every UN member, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe
UN members and observers	195	Vatican City and Palestine, the two observer states
Countries and territories	250	Places with their own ISO country code, like Greenland, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong, plus Kosovo
Travelers' Century Club	330	Splits some countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland count separately

The choice changes your number more than you'd think. A week in London and Edinburgh is one country on the UN list and two on the club's. A cruise around the Caribbean can add five territories on the longer lists and nothing on the UN one. Which list to count by compares them in detail. The full list of 250 and the club's 330 are both on this site.

Step 2: decide what counts as a visit

Write your rule down before you start, so you don't bend it for the one country you want to claim. Most travelers agree on three things:

You were on the ground. Flying over a country never counts. Neither does sailing past its coast.
Length doesn't matter. An afternoon in Liechtenstein counts the same as a month. Some people add a personal bar, like a night or a meal, but the big lists don't ask for one.
Each country counts once. Ten trips to Italy are still one Italy.

The arguments start at the edges, and each has its own guide:

Layovers. Staying inside the airport is the most argued case. See does a layover count.
Cruise stops. Going ashore usually counts; staying on board usually doesn't. See does a cruise stop count.
Territories. Greenland, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong are on some lists and not others. See do territories count.
Countries that are gone. A trip to Yugoslavia in 1985 counts for today's countries. See countries that no longer exist.
Disputed places. Taiwan, Kosovo, Palestine and Western Sahara are not UN members. Palestine is a UN observer state. The 250 list and the club's 330 include all four, and the club also lists places like Abkhazia, Transnistria and Somaliland separately. Count them the way your chosen list does.

Step 3: gather the evidence

Memory alone misses things, especially day trips and childhood holidays. Work through these sources, oldest first:

Old passports. Stamps are the classic record, but they have gaps. Crossing between countries inside the Schengen area normally involves no passport control, so a road trip from France to Belgium leaves no stamp. The EU's Entry/Exit System now records non-EU visitors digitally instead of stamping passports.
Your photos. If your phone saved a location with each photo, your camera roll is a map of everywhere you've been. Find every country from your iPhone photos shows how to read it.
Location history. If you used Google Maps Timeline, export it before it's gone.
Email and bookings. Search your inbox for "boarding pass", "booking confirmation" and "e-ticket". Airline emails go back years.
A flight log. Every airport you've landed in is a lead. See how to make a flight log.
The whole list. Finally, read through all 250 places one continent at a time. Seeing "Andorra" or "Gibraltar" in print jogs memories that nothing else will.

Step 4: keep it in one place

A spreadsheet works, as long as you note where each entry came from. A free country checklist lets you tick off countries list by list, and the visited countries map colors them in so you can share the result.

If your photos carry locations, Globestamp does the first pass for you: it reads where each photo was taken, privately on the iPhone, and stamps every country it finds, including old trips. Its rules settle the usual arguments the strict way. A photo taken from a plane never counts, and photos only at an airport make a lighter transit stamp that counts only if you count layovers.

A worked example

Say you live in the United States and your trips include a Mexican cruise stop in Cozumel where you went ashore, a week in London with a day trip to Edinburgh, a connection in Doha without leaving the airport, and five days in Hong Kong.

Country	UN 193	250 list	TCC 330
United States	1	1	1 (Contiguous)
Mexico	1	1	1
United Kingdom	1	1	2 (England, Scotland)
Hong Kong	Your call (see below)	1	1
Qatar (airport only)	Your layover rule	Your layover rule	1 if you left the plane

On the UN list, Hong Kong has no entry of its own, so travelers split on whether it earns them China. Decide once and write it down. The club's published wording counts even a plane fuel stop, as long as you get off and set foot in the territory, which is why the Doha connection can count there.

How to count the countries you've visited