Netherlands
Name
| Official name | Kingdom of the Netherlands — Koninkrijk der Nederlanden; the Netherlands — Nederland — the country in Europe with the Caribbean municipalities |
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| Former names | The Republic of the Seven United Provinces (1581–1795); the Batavian Republic (1795–1806); the Kingdom of Holland of Louis Bonaparte (1806–10); the United Kingdom of the Netherlands with Belgium (1815–30); the Spanish and the Burgundian Netherlands before the Revolt; Holland in the world's usage |
| Demonym | Dutch; Netherlander |
| Meaning of the name | The Low Countries — Nederlanden, the lands of the low ground of the delta, against the Oberland of the Rhine above; Dutch from the Old English for the people's speech, the same word as Deutsch; Holland "wood land" of the counts, or "hollow land" |
| Motto | "Je Maintiendrai" — I will maintain; the motto of the House of Orange-Nassau on the arms, in French |
Quick facts
| Capital | Amsterdam — the constitutional capital by Article 32; about 940,000 in the city, 2.5 million in the metropolis; The Hague the seat of government, the parliament, the courts and the king's office |
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| Largest cities | Amsterdam; Rotterdam, about 670,000, the port; The Hague, about 560,000; Utrecht, about 370,000; Eindhoven of Philips and ASML; Groningen; Tilburg; Almere of the polder, the newest city of 1976; Breda; Nijmegen, the oldest; the Randstad of 8 million |
| Official languages | Dutch — Nederlands — the language of 24 million with Flanders, the Germanic tongue of the delta; Frisian co-official in Friesland, the nearest relative of English with about 450,000 speakers; Papiamento on Bonaire and English on Saba and Sint Eustatius official in the Caribbean; Limburgish and Low Saxon recognized regional languages; English spoken by nine in ten, the highest proficiency of any non-native country |
| Currency | Euro — EUR, €; since 1 January 2002, the guilder of 1680–2002 at 2.20371; the Caribbean municipalities in U.S. dollars |
| Time zone | Central European Time, UTC+1; summer time UTC+2; the Caribbean at UTC−4 |
| Calling code | +31; +599 the Caribbean municipalities |
| Internet domain | .nl — 6 million registrations, among the largest of any country |
| ISO 3166 codes | NL · NLD · 528 |
| Vehicle registration code | NL |
| Driving side | Right |
| Electricity | 230 V, 50 Hz; plug types C and F |
| Independence | The Act of Abjuration of 26 July 1581, the provinces' renunciation of Philip II of Spain, and the Peace of Münster of 30 January 1648 that ended the Eighty Years' War and recognized the Republic; the Kingdom of 16 March 1815 under William I; the liberation of 5 May 1945 |
| National days | 27 April, King's Day, the king's birthday, the orange of the streets; 4 May, Remembrance of the Dead, the two minutes at 8 p.m.; 5 May, Liberation Day; 1 July, Keti Koti, the abolition of slavery of 1863, a national commemoration since 2023; Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Whitsun; 5 December, Sinterklaas, the feast of the children; 25 and 26 December; 1 January; the Prinsjesdag of the third Tuesday of September |
| Constitution | 24 August 1815 — the Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Grondwet, revised in 1848 by Thorbecke into the parliamentary monarchy of ministerial responsibility and the elected House, again in 1917 for universal suffrage and the schools, in 1983 in its present form: the king inviolable and the ministers responsible, the States General of two houses, the provinces and municipalities, no constitutional court, the Charter for the Kingdom of 1954 above it for the four countries; the oldest written constitution of Europe in continuous force after Norway's |
| Population | About 18.1 million (Statistics Netherlands, 1 January 2026), from 18.0 million a year before — the growth by migration, the births below the deaths since 2022 |
| Area | 41,543 km² (16,040 sq mi) — land 33,893 km², water 7,650 km²; the Caribbean Netherlands 328 km² more; the Kingdom with Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten 42,531 km² |
Flag & national symbols
| National flag | Three horizontal bands of red, white and blue — the oldest tricolor in the world, the Prinsenvlag of orange, white and blue flown by the rebels of William of Orange from 1572, the orange faded to red by the 1660s for the dye or the politics, the red-white-blue the model of the tricolors of France and Russia and the fathers of a hundred flags; fixed by royal decree of 19 February 1937 with the colors vermilion and cobalt, the orange pennant flown above it on the days of the House of Orange.Flag of the Netherlands |
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| Coat of arms | A blue shield strewn with golden billets bearing a crowned golden lion with a sword and a sheaf of seven arrows, the seven provinces of the Union of Utrecht, crowned and held by two lions, on the ribbon "Je Maintiendrai," the motto of William the Silent; the arms of the Republic joined to those of Nassau, adopted 1815 and fixed 10 July 1907 |
| National anthem | "Wilhelmus" — "Wilhelmus van Nassouwe" — the song of the Revolt written between 1568 and 1572 in the voice of William of Orange, fifteen stanzas whose first letters spell his name, the oldest national anthem in use in the world, sung to a French soldiers' tune; official since 10 May 1932; the first and sixth stanzas sung, "of German blood" and "the King of Spain I have always honored" the lines the foreigners ask about |
| National motto | "Je Maintiendrai" |
| National colors | Orange — the color of the House of Orange-Nassau, of the football shirts, the King's Day streets and the carrots bred for it; red, white and blue of the flag |
| National animal | The lion of the arms; the black-tailed godwit, the grutto of the wet meadows, voted the national bird in 2015; the cow of the polder, the Friesian; widely cited |
| National flower | The tulip — the bulb from Turkey of the 1590s that made the mania of 1637 and the fields of the Bollenstreek, the Keukenhof of 7 million; widely cited and unofficial |
| National dish | Stamppot, the mashed potatoes with kale or endive and the rookworst sausage, of the winter; the raw herring with onions of the street stalls, the Hollandse Nieuwe of June; bitterballen and the kroket of the bars; erwtensoep, the pea soup thick enough for the spoon to stand; the stroopwafel; the Gouda and Edam cheeses; the Indonesian rijsttafel of the colony; the licorice; widely cited |
| National sport | Football, the Oranje of the European title of 1988 and the three World Cup finals of 1974, 1978 and 2010 never won, Cruyff and the "total football," Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord; speed skating, the Olympic golds of every winter games, the Elfstedentocht of the eleven cities when the canals freeze; cycling, the 23 million bicycles; field hockey, the men and women both Olympic champions of 2024; Max Verstappen of Formula One; korfball, the Dutch invention; widely cited |
| Symbol status | The flag by the decree of 1937 and the arms by the decree of 1907; the anthem by the decision of 1932; the color by the House; the bird by the vote of 2015; the flower, dishes and sports widely cited |
Geography
| Location | Western Europe on the North Sea — Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, Britain across the sea; the delta of the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt; the Caribbean municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba in the Antilles |
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| Land borders | 1,053 km (654 mi) with two neighbors — Germany 575, Belgium 478, the Baarle enclaves of the Belgian village inside the Dutch one and the Dutch inside those; the Schengen borders without posts; the Drielandenpunt on the Vaalserberg |
| Coastline | 451 km (280 mi) — the dunes of the Holland coast from the Hook to Den Helder, the Wadden Sea and the five inhabited Frisian islands of Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland and Schiermonnikoog, the Zeeland delta of the dams, the beaches of Scheveningen and Zandvoort; the Afsluitdijk of 32 km that closed the Zuiderzee in 1932; the North Sea of the gas and the wind farms |
| Highest point | The Vaalserberg, 322 m (1,057 ft), in South Limburg; Mount Scenery on Saba, 887 m, the highest of the Kingdom |
| Lowest point | The Zuidplaspolder at Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel, −6.76 m (−22 ft) |
| Mean elevation | 30 m (98 ft) — about 26% of the land below sea level, 55% at risk of flooding |
| Rivers | The Rhine, entering at Lobith and splitting into the Waal, the Nederrijn–Lek and the IJssel, the busiest river of the world and the highway of Rotterdam's barges to Germany and Switzerland; the Meuse — the Maas — from France through Limburg to join the Rhine's delta; the Scheldt of Antwerp's outlet through Zeeland; the Amstel of Amsterdam, the Vecht, the Eem; the canals of every town, the Noordzeekanaal and the Amsterdam–Rhine canal |
| Lakes | The IJsselmeer, 1,100 km², the fresh lake made from the Zuiderzee by the Afsluitdijk of 1932, and the Markermeer cut from it in 1976, the largest lakes; the Frisian lakes of Sneek; the Loosdrecht and the Vinkeveen of the peat; the Veluwemeer; the Oostvaardersplassen marsh born of the polder; the Grevelingen, the largest saltwater lake of Europe, made by the Delta Works |
| Terrain | Flat — the delta and the polders of the west and north, the land reclaimed since the 1200s by the windmills and the pumps, Flevoland of 1942–68 the largest artificial island; the dunes of the coast; the Wadden mudflats; the sandy heaths and forests of the Veluwe, the Utrechtse Heuvelrug and Drenthe; the river clay of the Betuwe; the hills of South Limburg the only ones; a third of the country under sea level and a fifth under water |
| Climate | Temperate maritime — mild winters at 3°C and cool summers at 18°C, the Gulf Stream and the west wind, 800 mm of rain spread over the year, the grey skies; the frost of the Elfstedentocht that has not come since 1997; the heat of 40.7°C at Gilze-Rijen in July 2019; the storms of the North Sea |
| Natural hazards | Flooding — the North Sea flood of 1 February 1953 that broke the Zeeland dikes with 1,836 dead and made the Delta Works, the river floods of 1993 and 1995 with 250,000 evacuated, the Limburg floods of July 2021; the sea's rise against a country of dikes, the "Delta Programme" of every year; the earthquakes of the Groningen gas field, 1,600 tremors that cracked the houses and shut the field in 2024; the droughts of 2018 and 2022 that dried the rivers; the storms, Ciarán of 2023; the Wadden and the shipping |
| Natural resources | Natural gas — the Groningen field found in 1959, the largest of Europe, that paid the welfare state and shook the province, closed in April 2024, and the small fields of the North Sea; the salt of Twente and Groningen; sand, gravel and clay; the peat of the past; the wind of the North Sea; the farmland of the clay and the greenhouses |
| Land use | Agricultural land about 55%, the pastures of the cows and the fields of the potatoes, the sugar beets and the bulbs; forest about 11%; the built-up land about 15% and rising; the water a fifth |
| National parks | 21 national parks — the Hoge Veluwe of 1935 with the Kröller-Müller museum's Van Goghs in the heath, the Veluwezoom, the Wadden islands of Texel and Schiermonnikoog, the Biesbosch freshwater tidal forest, the Oostvaardersplassen of the wild horses and cattle on the drained bed, the Weerribben-Wieden peat marsh, the Zuid-Kennemerland dunes, the Drentsche Aa, the Nieuw Land of the polder; the Natura 2000 of the nitrogen fight |
| UNESCO World Heritage | 13 — Schokland and its surroundings (1995), the drowned island; the Dutch Water Defence Lines (1996, extended 2021), the Defence Line of Amsterdam and the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie of the flooding forts; the mill network of Kinderdijk-Elshout (1997), the nineteen windmills of 1740; the Ir. D.F. Wouda steam pumping station (1998), the largest ever; the Beemster polder (1999), the first of 1612; the Rietveld Schröder House (2000); the Wadden Sea (2009, shared); the canal ring of Amsterdam (2010); the Van Nellefabriek (2014); the Colonies of Benevolence (2021, shared); the Frontiers of the Roman Empire's Lower German Limes (2021, shared); the Eise Eisinga Planetarium (2023), the oldest working; and Willemstad of Curaçao (1997) in the Kingdom |
| Administrative divisions | 12 provinces — Drenthe, Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Limburg, North Brabant, North Holland, Overijssel, South Holland, Utrecht and Zeeland — with elected provincial councils and the King's Commissioners; 342 municipalities in 2026 with elected councils and appointed mayors; the 21 water boards of the dikes, the oldest democracies of the country, elected since 1255; the three Caribbean special municipalities; the four countries of the Kingdom |
People
| Population | About 18.1 million (1 January 2026) |
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| Population density | About 530 per km² (1,380 per sq mi) of land — the highest of any country of the EU but Malta, South Holland at 1,400 |
| Population growth | About 0.5% a year, all of it migration — the labor migrants of Poland and the students of Germany, the refugees of Syria and Ukraine, the expats of the Zuidas; the deaths above the births since 2022 |
| Median age | About 42 years |
| Life expectancy | About 82 years — 80 for men, 83 for women |
| Fertility rate | About 1.4 births per woman — the record low of 2024 |
| Urban population | About 93% |
| Adult literacy | 99% |
| Origins | Of Dutch origin about 73%, both parents born in the country; with a migration background about 27% by the statistics office's count of 2025 — Turkish about 2.5%, the guest workers of the 1960s and their grandchildren; Moroccan 2.4%; Surinamese 2.1%, of the colony freed in 1975; Indonesian 2%, the Indos of 1949; Polish 1.5%, the workers of the greenhouses; German, Antillean, Syrian, Belgian, the British of the Brexit, the Indians of Eindhoven; the Frisians of the north, a people of their own with their language; the Dutch the tallest people on earth, the men at 183 cm |
| Languages | Dutch by nearly all as the first or second language, the standard of the Randstad and the dialects of Brabant, Limburg and the north; Frisian by 450,000 in Friesland; English by 90% and more, the language of the universities' courses and the Amsterdam of the expats; Turkish, Arabic, Berber, Polish, Papiamento and Sranan of the communities; German by two-thirds; the Dutch of Flanders and Suriname and the Afrikaans of the Cape its children |
| Religion | None 57% by the survey of 2023, the most secular of the old Christian countries — the churches sold for apartments and the Bible Belt of the Veluwe and Zeeland still full; Roman Catholic 17%, the south below the rivers; Protestant 13%, the Protestant Church of 2004 that merged the Reformed and the Lutherans, the Calvinism of the Republic; Muslim 5.5%, the Turks, Moroccans and Surinamese; Hindu 1%, the Surinamese Hindustanis; Buddhist, Jewish about 40,000, the remnant of the 140,000 of 1940; the pillars of the old society gone |
| Human Development Index | 0.955 (2023 data, 2025 report) — very high; about 5th of 193 |
| The Caribbean and the colonies | The three Caribbean municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, about 30,000 people; the three countries of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, about 300,000, with their own governments under the Kingdom; the slave trade of the West India Company and the plantations of Suriname and the Antilles, 600,000 Africans carried, for which the prime minister apologized on 19 December 2022 and the king on 1 July 2023, the 150th Keti Koti; the Dutch East Indies of the VOC and the state, 350 years to the independence war of 1945–49 the government called "police actions" and admitted as "extreme violence" in 2022; Suriname independent 1975 and its 350,000 in the Netherlands; the Indonesia of 280 million the largest of the old empire |
| Sport | Football — the Oranje of Cruyff, Van Basten and Gullit, the Euro of 1988, the finals of 1974, 1978 and 2010, the women's Euro of 2017 and World Cup final of 2019; the earliest exit ever of June 2026, out to Morocco on penalties in the round of 32 on 29 June, the third shootout defeat in a row, Koeman resigned; the Eredivisie of Ajax's four European Cups, PSV and Feyenoord; speed skating, the Dutch golds of every Winter Olympics, Milan-Cortina of 2026 no exception; cycling, Van der Poel and Vos, the Amstel Gold; field hockey's double gold of Paris; Verstappen's four world titles of 2021–24 and the Zandvoort grand prix; darts of Van Gerwen; the 2028 Olympics bids none |
| Diaspora | About 1 million Dutch abroad — Belgium, Germany, Britain, the United States, Australia and Canada of the emigrants of the 1950s; about 5 million Americans of Dutch descent, the Roosevelts and the Vanderbilts; the Afrikaners of South Africa of the Cape of 1652, 3 million speakers of the daughter language; the Dutch of Suriname and the Antilles |
Government
| Form of government | Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the Constitution of 1815 as revised — the king the head of state, inviolable, "the government" the king and the ministers together; the prime minister the chairman of the council of ministers, first among equals, head of government since the Constitution named the office in 1983; the States General of the House of Representatives of 150 and the Senate of 75; the coalition cabinets of the proportional system, the "polder model" of the consensus; the Kingdom of four countries under the Charter of 1954 |
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| King | Willem-Alexander, since 30 April 2013 — the seventh monarch of the House of Orange-Nassau since 1815 and the first king since 1890, on the abdication of his mother Beatrix after 33 years; born 27 April 1967 at Utrecht, the water manager and the pilot who flew the KLM 737s, married to Máxima Zorreguieta of Argentina since 2 February 2002; the apology for slavery of 1 July 2023 at the Oosterpark, "I ask forgiveness"; the Princess of Orange, Catharina-Amalia, born 7 December 2003, the heir, the student of Amsterdam threatened by the criminals of 2022; the king who signs the laws and swears in the cabinets, the "Prinsjesdag" speech from the throne of the third Tuesday of September |
| Prime Minister | Rob Jetten (Democrats 66 — D66), since 23 February 2026 — the eleventh prime minister since the war's end by the count of the persons, the youngest at 38 and the first of his party, the first openly gay prime minister of the country; born 25 March 1987 at Veghel in Brabant, a public administration graduate of Radboud University, the ProRail manager, the D66 parliamentary leader of 2018–21, the minister for climate and energy of Rutte's fourth cabinet of 2022–24 and its first deputy prime minister, the party's leader since 12 August 2023 after Sigrid Kaag; the winner of the election of 29 October 2025 by a whisker, the formateur of 3 February 2026 after the House's debate, the "cabinet of collaboration" that "will work not only across parties in parliament but also with social partners and industry," his words; the marathon runner and the fiancé of the Argentine field hockey player Nicolás Keenan; Dick Schoof, the civil servant who led the Wilders-backed cabinet of 2024–26, his predecessor, Mark Rutte of the fourteen years before |
| The cabinet | The Jetten cabinet sworn in by the king at Huis ten Bosch on 23 February 2026 — 18 ministers and 10 state secretaries, three ministries fewer than the last, D66 with 7 ministers over education, agriculture, social affairs, housing, climate and trade, the VVD with 6 over finance, defense, justice and health, the CDA with 5 over foreign affairs, the interior and the economy; Dilan Yeşilgöz of the VVD and Bart van den Brink of the CDA the deputy prime ministers; Tom Berendsen (CDA) the foreign minister; the coalition agreement of 30 January 2026 — the state pension age raised, "new steps are needed" to keep the pensions affordable, Jetten said, "a false start for this coalition" and the undermining of the pension deal of 2019, Jesse Klaver of GroenLinks–PvdA answered; the healthcare deductible raised, the asylum tightened, the defense toward 3.5%, the housing of 100,000 homes a year, the nitrogen; the minority of 66 seats, ten short, that must find its majorities issue by issue, the first such cabinet without a support agreement since 1918 |
| The 2025 election | The snap election of 29 October 2025 for the 150 seats, called after the Party for Freedom quit the Schoof cabinet on 3 June 2025 over the asylum measures Wilders demanded and the New Social Contract quit on 23 August over the sanctions on Israel: D66 of Rob Jetten 26 seats and the most votes by 28,000, its best result ever, from 9; the PVV of Geert Wilders 26, down from the 37 of its victory of 2023; the VVD of Dilan Yeşilgöz 22; GroenLinks–PvdA of Frans Timmermans 20, Timmermans resigned on the night and Jesse Klaver took the lead; the CDA of Henri Bontenbal 18, from 5; JA21 9; Forum for Democracy 7; the Farmer–Citizen Movement 4, from 7; the SP, DENK, the Party for the Animals, the ChristianUnion and the SGP 3 each; 50PLUS 2; Volt 1; the NSC of Omtzigt of 20 seats gone to nothing; turnout 78.4%; the VVD's refusal of the left and D66's of JA21 the arithmetic that left the minority |
| Parliament | The States General — the House of Representatives, the Tweede Kamer, of 150 members elected for four years by nationwide proportional representation with no threshold but the quota of a seat, fifteen parties seated in 2025; the Senate, the Eerste Kamer, of 75 elected by the provincial councils for four years, its power of veto without amendment, the BBB the largest party of the Senate of 2023, the next Senate in May 2027 after the provincial elections of March; the Binnenhof of The Hague under renovation since 2021, the houses in the temporary chambers; the PVV's 26 cut to 19 by the defection of the seven of Gidi Markuszower on 20 January 2026 who made the Markuszower Group and, on 17 April 2026, the party De Nederlandse Alliantie, "too few concrete results for its voters," their charge against Wilders, the party of one member; Mona Keijzer of the BBB an independent since 23 February; Caroline van der Plas's BBB leadership passed to Henk Vermeer on 20 February 2026 |
| The next election | The general election by the autumn of 2029, the full term of the House elected in 2025; the provincial and water-board elections on 17 March 2027 and the Senate in May 2027; the European Parliament in June 2029; the municipal councils in March 2030 |
| The Wilders years | Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom, the winner of the election of 22 November 2023 with 37 seats on the asylum and the "Nexit" it dropped, kept from the premiership by its partners and given the Schoof cabinet of 2 July 2024, the technocrat Dick Schoof of the intelligence service as prime minister of the PVV, the VVD, the NSC and the BBB, the first cabinet with the far right since the war; the "asylum crisis" law, the ten-point plan Wilders put on the table on 26 May 2025 and the walkout of 3 June 2025 that made the cabinet a caretaker, "I promised the voters the strictest asylum policy ever," his words, "irresponsible," the partners'; the fall of the PVV to 26 and its split of January 2026; the trial of Wilders for the "fewer Moroccans" chant of 2014, convicted in 2016 without a penalty; the 20 years of the pillar of the right |
| The municipal elections of 2026 | The councils of the 342 municipalities elected 18 March 2026 for four years, the local parties the largest bloc as in every election since 2010 — Heart for The Hague of Richard de Mos with 16 of the 45 seats of the seat of government, its plurality grown by seven, the new executive with the VVD, DENK and the CDA; the D66 of Amsterdam and Utrecht, the GroenLinks–PvdA of the cities; the PVV's lists in more towns than ever and the smaller ballot of the A3 experiment in eleven municipalities; the repeat election of 30 April 2026 in one municipality; the turnout under half |
| The Hague | The seat of government and the "international city of peace and justice" — the International Court of Justice in the Peace Palace of Carnegie's money of 1913, the International Criminal Court of 2002, the OPCW of the chemical weapons, Europol, Eurojust and the tribunals of Yugoslavia and Lebanon, some 200 international organizations; the Binnenhof of the parliament since 1446, the Ridderzaal of the throne speech; the king's office at Noordeinde and his home at Huis ten Bosch; the NATO summit of 24–25 June 2025 at the World Forum, the 5% pledge of the allies and Rutte its secretary-general since 1 October 2024 |
| Legal system | Civil law of the French codes of 1809–38 rewritten in the new Civil Code of 1992, the courts of the eleven districts and four appeals, the Supreme Court of cassation at The Hague, no constitutional review of the laws; the Council of State that advises and judges the administration; the death penalty abolished 1870 and forbidden 1983; the first same-sex marriage in the world on 1 April 2001; the euthanasia law of 2002, the first; the tolerated cannabis of the coffee shops since 1976 and the regulated growing of the "wietexperiment" of 2024–26; the prostitution legal since 2000; the childcare benefits scandal that felled the Rutte III cabinet on 15 January 2021 and the compensation of the 30,000 families; the Mocro Maffia trials of Ridouan Taghi, the life sentence of 27 February 2024, and the murders of the journalist De Vries of 2021 and the lawyer Wiersum of 2019 |
| Local government | 12 provinces with their councils, elected next on 17 March 2027, and their executives under the King's Commissioners; 342 municipalities with councils elected 18 March 2026 and mayors appointed by the crown on the councils' nomination, Femke Halsema of Amsterdam since 2018 the first woman; the 21 water boards; the Caribbean municipalities of the island councils |
| Defense | The Netherlands Armed Forces of about 42,000 active with the reserves — the army, the navy of the Den Helder frigates and submarines, the air force of the 52 F-35s of Volkel and Leeuwarden and the Patriots, the marechaussee of the borders; the conscription suspended in 1997 and the register of 2023; the budget past 2% of GDP in 2024 and toward the 3.5% of the NATO pledge of 2025, about €25 billion; the F-16s and the Patriots given to Ukraine, the training of the Ukrainian pilots; the Srebrenica of July 1995, the Dutchbat that could not stop the massacre and the cabinet that fell for it in 2002; the nuclear task of the F-35s; a founding member of NATO since 4 April 1949 |
| Foreign policy | The European Union, a founder of 1957 with the Benelux and the Treaty of Maastricht of 7 February 1992 that made the euro; NATO of the founders; the United States of the trade and the chips, ASML's export licenses to China the Washington–The Hague quarrel since 2023, the Nexperia seizure of 12 October 2025 when the government took control of the Chinese-owned chipmaker of Nijmegen under a Cold War law and Beijing stopped its exports until the deal of November; Germany the largest trading partner; the Ukraine of the F-16s and the MH17 verdict of 17 November 2022 that convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian of the 196 Dutch dead of 17 July 2014; Indonesia and Suriname of the apologies; the Caribbean of the Venezuelan crisis of 2025–26 off Aruba and Curaçao; the development aid cut; the "Nexit" of Wilders abandoned |
| United Nations | A founding member of 10 December 1945; the International Court of Justice at The Hague since 1946 and the International Criminal Court since 2002; the Security Council seats of 1946, 1951–52, 1965–66, 1983–84, 1999–2000 and 2018; the peacekeepers of Lebanon, Bosnia, Mali and the Golan |
| Other memberships | The European Union (1957) and the eurozone (1999); NATO (1949); the Benelux Union of 1944 and 1958, the first customs union; the OECD, a founder; the WTO (1995); the Council of Europe (1949); the Schengen Area (1985), named for the Luxembourg village of the signing; the G20 as a guest; the Kingdom's Caribbean in the CARICOM as observers |
Economy
| GDP (nominal) | About US$1.27 trillion (2025, IMF) — the seventeenth economy in the world and the fifth of the European Union |
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| GDP per capita | About US$70,000 (2025) — among the ten highest of the countries of size |
| GDP per capita (PPP) | About US$83,000 (2025) |
| GDP growth | About 1.8% in 2024, about 1.5% in 2025 and about 1.3% expected in 2026 under the tariffs and the German slowdown; inflation about 3%; unemployment about 3.8%, the labor shortage of every sector; the AAA of the ratings; the euro |
| Economy by sector | Services about 70% — the trade, the logistics, the finance and the state; industry about 18%; agriculture about 1.6% of the output and a fifth of the exports |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) |
| Trade and the port | The second-largest exporter of farm and food products in the world after the United States, about €130 billion a year — the flowers of Aalsmeer's auction, the largest, the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers of the Westland greenhouses, the cheese, the potatoes, the meat and the seeds, the Wageningen science behind them; Rotterdam, the largest port of Europe, 435 million metric tons and 14 million containers a year, the door of the Rhine and of Germany's trade, the Maasvlakte of the sea; the exports of about US$900 billion with the re-exports, the third-largest exporter of goods in the world by the count that includes them; the trade surplus of a decade; the "gateway to Europe" of the distribution centers |
| Industry and the chips | ASML of Veldhoven, the only maker of the extreme-ultraviolet lithography machines that print the world's advanced chips, the most valuable company of Europe at about €300 billion, the export licenses to China the strain of the American alliance; NXP and Nexperia of Nijmegen, the chips of the cars, Nexperia seized from its Chinese owner in October 2025; Philips of Eindhoven, the lamps become the medical scanners; Shell, the Anglo-Dutch major that moved its seat to London in 2022, and Unilever that went in 2020; Heineken, the beer of 190 countries; DSM-Firmenich, AkzoNobel, the chemicals of Chemelot and the Botlek; the Damen shipyards; the "Brainport" of Eindhoven |
| Finance and the Zuidas | ING, Rabobank of the farmers' cooperative and ABN Amro of the state's rescue of 2008; the pension funds of about €1.8 trillion, the largest of any country by the head, ABP of the civil servants the largest of Europe, the new pension law of 2023 and the coalition's age rise the fight; Adyen of the payments and Booking.com of Amsterdam; the Euronext Amsterdam of the world's first stock exchange of 1602; the tax treaties of the "letterbox companies" the OECD chased; the Zuidas towers |
| Energy | Natural gas — the Groningen field of 1959, the largest of Europe, 2,900 billion cubic meters produced and €430 billion earned, closed by the earthquakes on 1 October 2023 and sealed in April 2024, the compensation of the province; the North Sea gas of the small fields and the imports through the LNG terminals of Eemshaven and Rotterdam since Russia's gas ended; the offshore wind of the North Sea, about 5,000 MW and the 21,000 planned for 2032, the largest builder after Britain; the solar on a third of the roofs, the most per head in the world; the Borssele nuclear plant of 1973 and the two new reactors planned; the coal plants shut by 2030; the "nitrogen crisis" of the farms and the courts since 2019 |
| Farming and the land | The most intensive farming on earth on 1.8 million hectares — 3.8 million cattle, 11 million pigs, 100 million chickens, the manure and the nitrogen of the court ruling of 29 May 2019 that stopped the building permits and made the farmers' protests and the BBB; the greenhouses of 10,000 hectares under glass and LED; the bulbs of 27,000 hectares; the dairy of FrieslandCampina; the buyout of the farms near the nature reserves; the Wageningen University of the science |
| Public finances | Public debt about 44% of GDP; the deficit about 2%, the "3% rule" of the euro the line the coalition agreement of 2026 held; the budget of about €450 billion presented on Prinsjesdag of 15 September 2026, the Jetten cabinet's first; the healthcare of €100 billion the largest item, the deductible raised; the state pension, the AOW, at 67 and rising with the life expectancy; the housing shortage of 400,000 homes the politics of every party; the Groningen fund; the defense spending toward 3.5% |
| Income classification | High income (World Bank); the fourth-largest investor in the United States and the largest in Europe by the holdings of its letterbox companies |
Transport & infrastructure
| Main airports | Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, about 72 million passengers in 2024, the third-busiest of Europe, the KLM hub of six runways on the bed of the Haarlemmermeer lake 4 m below the sea, the cap of 478,000 flights of the noise fight; Eindhoven of the low-cost carriers; Rotterdam The Hague; Groningen Eelde, Maastricht Aachen; Lelystad built and never opened |
|---|---|
| Airlines | KLM — Royal Dutch Airlines — of 7 October 1919, the oldest airline in the world still flying under its original name, merged with Air France in 2004; Transavia its low-cost arm; TUI Netherlands; Corendon; the Amsterdam hub of 170 destinations |
| Main ports | Rotterdam, the largest port of Europe and the tenth of the world, 40 km from the city to the sea along the Nieuwe Waterweg, the Europoort and the Maasvlakte of 2013, the oil, the containers and the coal; Amsterdam, the largest gasoline port in the world; Vlissingen and Terneuzen of Zeeland; the barges of the Rhine, the largest inland fleet of Europe, 5,000 vessels; the Betuweroute of the trains to Germany |
| Railways | About 3,220 km (2,000 mi) of standard gauge, three-quarters electrified, the densest network of Europe — the NS trains on ProRail's tracks, 1.3 million passengers a day, the Intercity every ten minutes between the four cities, Amsterdam to Rotterdam in 40 minutes on the HSL-Zuid of 2009, the Eurostar to London and Paris and the ICE to Frankfurt; the Betuweroute freight line of 2007 to the Ruhr; the OV-chipkaart of all the transport; the Amsterdam and Rotterdam metros, the trams of five cities |
| Roads | About 139,000 km (86,000 mi), all paved — the densest motorway network of Europe, the A2, A4, A12 and A27 of the Randstad, the traffic jams of the morning the country's complaint; 9 million cars; the speed limit of 100 km/h by day since 2020 for the nitrogen; the driving on the right; the Westerschelde tunnel of 2003, the Zeeland bridge, the Afsluitdijk road across the sea |
| The bicycle | 23 million bicycles for 18 million people, the most per head in the world, a quarter of all trips and half the trips in Amsterdam and Utrecht, the 35,000 km of cycle paths, the multi-story bicycle garage of Utrecht station for 12,500, the largest; the flat land and the wind; the electric bicycle of the commuters since the 2010s; the Elfstedentocht of the skaters when the ice holds |
History in dates
| c. 5000 BC | The first farmers of the loess; the Drenthe dolmens, c. 3000 BC |
|---|---|
| 57 BC | Caesar — the Rhine the Roman frontier; the Batavians |
| c. 800 | Charlemagne; the Frisian trade of Dorestad |
| 1275 | Amsterdam's toll charter |
| 1568 | The Revolt against Spain — the Eighty Years' War |
| 1579 | The Union of Utrecht, 23 January |
| 1581 | The Act of Abjuration, 26 July |
| 1602 | The Dutch East India Company, 20 March — the first shares |
| 1609 | The Bank of Amsterdam; Hudson at Manhattan |
| 1637 | The tulip crash, February |
| 1648 | The Peace of Münster, 30 January — the Republic recognized |
| 1652 | The Cape settled; the Anglo-Dutch wars, to 1674 |
| 1667 | New Amsterdam ceded for Suriname — the Treaty of Breda |
| 1672 | The Disaster Year |
| 1688 | William III to England — the Glorious Revolution |
| 1795 | The Batavian Republic; the French |
| 1815 | The Kingdom, 16 March — William I; Waterloo |
| 1830 | Belgium secedes, 4 October |
| 1848 | Thorbecke's constitution, 3 November |
| 1863 | Slavery abolished, 1 July |
| 1919 | Women vote; KLM founded, 7 October |
| 1932 | The Afsluitdijk closed, 28 May |
| 1940 | The invasion, 10 May; Rotterdam bombed, 14 May |
| 1944 | The Hunger Winter, to 1945 — 20,000 dead |
| 1945 | Liberation, 5 May; 102,000 Jews murdered |
| 1949 | NATO, 4 April; Indonesia recognized, 27 December |
| 1953 | The flood, 1 February — 1,836 dead |
| 1957 | The Treaty of Rome |
| 1959 | The Groningen gas found |
| 1975 | Suriname independent, 25 November |
| 1986 | The Oosterscheldekering opened, 4 October |
| 1992 | The Maastricht Treaty, 7 February |
| 1995 | Srebrenica, July |
| 2001 | The first same-sex marriages, 1 April |
| 2002 | The euro, 1 January; Fortuyn murdered, 6 May |
| 2010 | Rutte prime minister, 14 October — for fourteen years |
| 2013 | Willem-Alexander, 30 April |
| 2014 | MH17, 17 July — 196 Dutch dead |
| 2021 | The benefits scandal fells the cabinet, 15 January |
| 2023 | The king's apology, 1 July; Groningen closed, 1 October; the PVV wins, 22 November |
| 2024 | The Schoof cabinet, 2 July; Rutte to NATO, 1 October |
| 2025 | The PVV walks out, 3 June; the NATO summit, 24–25 June; Nexperia seized, 12 October; the election, 29 October |
| 2026 | The PVV splits, 20 January; the coalition agreement, 30 January; the Jetten cabinet, 23 February; the municipal elections, 18 March; De Nederlandse Alliantie, 17 April; the World Cup exit, 29 June; Prinsjesdag, 15 September |
Records & firsts
| The oldest national anthem | "Wilhelmus," c. 1570 |
|---|---|
| The oldest tricolor | Since 1572 |
| The first stock exchange and the first shares | Amsterdam, 1602 |
| The first same-sex marriage | 1 April 2001 |
| A quarter of the land below the sea | The polders |
| The largest artificial island | Flevoland |
| The tallest people | Men at 183 cm |
| The most bicycles per head | 23 million |
| The second-largest farm exporter | About €130 billion |
| The largest port of Europe | Rotterdam |
| The only maker of EUV chip machines | ASML |
| The oldest airline under its name | KLM, 1919 |
| The youngest prime minister | Jetten at 38, 2026 |
| The first minority cabinet since 1918 | 66 of 150 |
Frequently asked questions
What is the official name of the Netherlands?
The Kingdom of the Netherlands — Koninkrijk der Nederlanden — the state of the House of Orange-Nassau founded on 16 March 1815 after the fall of Napoleon and made a constitutional monarchy by the constitution of 1848; the Netherlands proper is one of the four countries of the Kingdom with Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten in the Caribbean, and its own territory includes the three Caribbean islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba as special municipalities. The name means "the low lands," the Nederlanden of the delta of the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt; Holland, the name the world uses, is only the two western provinces of North and South Holland, which the government stopped using for the whole country in 2020. The independence dates from the Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Revolt against Spain, its Act of Abjuration of 1581 and the Peace of Münster of 1648.
What is the capital of the Netherlands?
Amsterdam — the constitutional capital by Article 32 of the Constitution, the city of the dam on the Amstel of 1275, of the Golden Age's canal ring and of the Rijksmuseum, the Anne Frank House and the 1,500 bridges — about 940,000 people in the city and 2.5 million in the metropolis; but the government, the parliament, the Supreme Court, the king's working palace and the embassies are all in The Hague, Den Haag, the seat of government since the counts of Holland in the 1200s and the "legal capital of the world" of the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the OPCW. Rotterdam, rebuilt after 1940 around the largest port of Europe, is the second city, Utrecht the fourth, Eindhoven of the chips the fifth; the four form the Randstad, the ring city of 8 million.
How big is the Netherlands, and how many people live there?
About 41,543 km² (16,040 sq mi) — twice the size of New Jersey, a fifth of it water — on the North Sea between Germany and Belgium at the mouths of the three rivers, a quarter of the land below sea level and half of it less than a meter above, held back by the dikes, the dunes and the Delta Works; the Caribbean municipalities add 328 km². Statistics Netherlands counted about 18.1 million people on 1 January 2026, growing by migration at half a percent a year, about 530 to the square kilometer, the most densely peopled country of the European Union after Malta and the most densely peopled of any size in the world; a quarter of them have a parent born abroad.
What are the highest and lowest points of the Netherlands?
The Vaalserberg, 322 m (1,057 ft), in the far southeast corner of Limburg where the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet on the hill of the Drielandenpunt, the only real hills of the country; and the Zuidplaspolder near Rotterdam, 6.76 m (22 ft) below sea level, the lowest point of the European Union outside the Caspian shore — the land of the polders drained since the 1200s, Flevoland the largest artificial island in the world, the Delta Works of 1953–97 the answer to the flood that killed 1,836. Mount Scenery on Saba in the Caribbean, 887 m, is the highest point of the Kingdom.
What currency does the Netherlands use?
The euro (ISO code EUR, €), since 1 January 2002 in the coins and notes and since 1999 in the accounts, the guilder of 1680 to 2002 converted at 2.20371 — the Netherlands a founding member of the eurozone; Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten keep their own florins and the Caribbean municipalities use the U.S. dollar. Clocks keep Central European Time, UTC+1, with summer time; the Netherlands drives on the right, and more than a quarter of its trips are made by bicycle.
Who governs the Netherlands?
King Willem-Alexander, the head of state since his mother Beatrix abdicated on 30 April 2013, in a constitutional monarchy where the king reigns and the ministers govern; and Prime Minister Rob Jetten of Democrats 66, head of government since 23 February 2026, the youngest prime minister the country has had at 38 and the first from his party, at the head of a minority cabinet of D66, the liberal VVD and the Christian Democrats of the CDA that holds only 66 of the 150 seats of the House of Representatives — the first minority government without a formal support agreement since 1918, "a cabinet of collaboration" in his words, "a false start" in the opposition's — formed after the election of 29 October 2025 that his party won by a handful of votes over Geert Wilders' Freedom Party, each with 26 seats, and after the fall of the previous government when Wilders walked out over asylum. The next election is due by 2029.
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