It might surprise you to hear that Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world. 

It's a huge place that's roughly the same size as the whole of Western Europe stretching from Portugal to Poland and if it were placed over the continental United States Kazakhstan's land mass would sprawl from San Diego in the southwest to St Louis in the East.

But despite its impressive geographic size Kazakhstan is also one of the emptiest locations on the entire planet.

While Western Europe is home to more than 400 million people, Kazakhstan only hit 20 million people in 2024 – fewer people than live in the US state of Florida spread out across an area that is about exactly 16 times larger than Florida.

This gives Kazakhstan one of the absolute lowest population densities of any location on the planet, at just over 7 people per square kilometre on average – the 11th lowest density of people of all the countries in the world.