Member states of NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an international military alliance consisting of 32 member states from Europe and North America. It was established at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949. Of the 32 member countries, 30 are in Europe and two are in North America. Between 1994 and 1997, wider forums for regional cooperation between NATO and its neighbours were set up, including the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue initiative, and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council.

All members have militaries, except for Iceland, which does not have a typical army (but it does have a coast guard and a small unit of civilian specialists for NATO operations). Three of NATO's members are nuclear weapons states: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NATO has 12 original founding member states. Three more members joined between 1952 and 1955, and a fourth joined in 1982. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has added 16 more members from 1999 to 2024. Article 5 of the treaty states that if an armed attack occurs against one of the member states, it shall be considered an attack against all members, and other members shall assist the attacked member, with armed forces if necessary. Article 6 of the treaty limits the scope of Article 5 to the islands north of the Tropic of Cancer, the North American and European mainlands, the entirety of Turkey, and French Algeria, the last of which has been moot since July 1962. Thus, an attack on Hawaii, Puerto Rico, French Guiana, the Falkland Islands, Ceuta or Melilla, among other places, would not trigger an Article 5 response.

NATO recognizes Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine as aspiring members as part of their Open Door enlargement policy.

Founding members and enlargement

NATO was established on 4 April 1949 via the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty (Washington Treaty). The 12 founding members of the Alliance were: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The various allies all signed the Ottawa Agreement, which is a 1951 document that acts to embody civilian oversight of the Alliance.

Current membership consists of 32 countries. In addition to the 12 founding countries, four new members joined during the Cold War: Greece and Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955) and Spain (1982). Additionally, NATO experienced territorial expansion during this period without adding new member states when Zone A of the Free Territory of Trieste was annexed by Italy in 1954, and the territory of the former East Germany was added with the reunification of Germany in 1990. NATO further expanded after the Cold War, adding the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro (2017); North Macedonia (2020); Finland (2023); and Sweden (2024). Of the territories and members added between 1990 and 2024, all except for Finland and Sweden were either formerly part of the Warsaw Pact (including the formerly Soviet Baltic states) or territories of the former Yugoslavia. No countries have left NATO since its founding, although France withdrew from NATO unified command between 1966 and 2009.

Since the accession of Sweden on 7 March 2024, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization covers a total area of 27,580,492 km² (10,648,887 sq mi).

In October 2025, during a meeting between USA President Donald Trump and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Trump suggested throwing Spain out of NATO. He called the country "Laggard", as it fails to meet the budget agreement of 5% GDP defense expenditure, like all other members. He was quoted saying: "You people are gonna have to start speaking to Spain, . . . You have to call them and find [out] why are they a laggard."

List of member states

The current members and their dates of admission are listed below.

List of member states of NATO

Flag	Map	Name	Capital	Accession	Population	Area	Military budget as %GDP 2024	GDP 2025 (million US$)	Languages
		Albania	Tirana	1 April 2009	002,854,710	28,748 km^2 (11,100 sq mi)	2.03	28,372	Albanian
		Belgium	Brussels	24 August 1949	011,611,419	30,528 km^2 (11,787 sq mi)	1.30	684,864	Dutch French German
		Bulgaria	Sofia	29 March 2004	006,885,868	110,879 km^2 (42,811 sq mi)	2.18	117,007	Bulgarian
		Canada	Ottawa	24 August 1949	038,155,012	9,984,670 km^2 (3,855,103 sq mi)	1.37	2,225,341	English French
		Croatia	Zagreb	1 April 2009	004,060,135	56,594 km^2 (21,851 sq mi)	1.81	98,951	Croatian
		Czech Republic	Prague	12 March 1999	010,510,751	78,867 km^2 (30,451 sq mi)	2.10	360,244	Czech
		Denmark	Copenhagen	24 August 1949	005,854,240	2,210,573 km^2 (853,507 sq mi)	2.37	449,940	Danish
		Estonia	Tallinn	29 March 2004	001,328,701	45,228 km^2 (17,463 sq mi)	3.43	45,004	Estonian
		Finland	Helsinki	4 April 2023	005,619,399	338,455 km^2 (130,678 sq mi)	2.41	303,945	Finnish Swedish
		France	Paris	24 August 1949	064,531,444	643,427 km^2 (248,429 sq mi)	2.06	3,211,292	French
		Germany	Berlin	6 May 1955 (West Germany) 3 October 1990 (Germany)	083,408,554	357,022 km^2 (137,847 sq mi)	2.12	4,744,804	German
		Greece	Athens	18 February 1952	010,445,365	131,957 km^2 (50,949 sq mi)	3.08	267,348	Greek
		Hungary	Budapest	12 March 1999	009,709,786	93,028 km^2 (35,918 sq mi)	2.11	237,070	Hungarian
		Iceland	Reykjavík	24 August 1949	000,370,335	103,000 km^2 (39,769 sq mi)	0.0	35,309	Icelandic
		Italy	Rome		059,240,329	301,340 km^2 (116,348 sq mi)	1.49	2,422,855	Italian
		Latvia	Riga	29 March 2004	001,873,919	64,589 km^2 (24,938 sq mi)	3.15	43,598	Latvian
		Lithuania	Vilnius		002,786,651	65,300 km^2 (25,212 sq mi)	2.85	89,192	Lithuanian
		Luxembourg	Luxembourg	24 August 1949	000,639,321	2,586 km^2 (998 sq mi)	1.29	96,613	Luxembourgish French German
		Montenegro	Podgorica	5 June 2017	000,627,859	13,812 km^2 (5,333 sq mi)	2.02	8,562	Montenegrin
		Netherlands	Amsterdam	24 August 1949	017,501,696	41,543 km^2 (16,040 sq mi)	2.05	1,272,011	Dutch
		North Macedonia	Skopje	27 March 2020	002,103,330	25,713 km^2 (9,928 sq mi)	2.22	17,885	Macedonian
		Norway	Oslo	24 August 1949	005,403,021	385,207 km^2 (148,729 sq mi)	2.20	504,276	Norwegian
		Poland	Warsaw	12 March 1999	038,307,726	312,685 km^2 (120,728 sq mi)	4.12	979,960	Polish
		Portugal	Lisbon	24 August 1949	010,290,103	92,090 km^2 (35,556 sq mi)	1.55	321,440	Portuguese
		Romania	Bucharest	29 March 2004	019,328,560	238,391 km^2 (92,043 sq mi)	2.25	403,395	Romanian
		Slovakia	Bratislava		005,447,622	49,035 km^2 (18,933 sq mi)	2.0	147,031	Slovak
		Slovenia	Ljubljana		002,119,410	20,273 km^2 (7,827 sq mi)	1.29	75,224	Slovene
		Spain	Madrid	30 May 1982	047,486,935	505,370 km^2 (195,124 sq mi)	1.28	1,799,511	Spanish
		Sweden	Stockholm	7 March 2024	010,467,097	450,295 km^2 (173,860 sq mi)	2.14	620,297	Swedish
		Turkey	Ankara	18 February 1952	084,775,404	783,562 km^2 (302,535 sq mi)	2.09	1,437,406	Turkish
		United Kingdom	London	24 August 1949	067,281,039	243,610 km^2 (94,058 sq mi)	2.33	3,839,180	English
		United States	Washington, D.C.		336,997,624	9,833,520 km^2 (3,796,743 sq mi)	3.38	30,507,217

Special arrangements

The three Nordic countries which joined NATO as founding members, Denmark, Iceland and Norway, chose to limit their participation in three areas: there would be no permanent peacetime bases, no nuclear warheads and no Allied military activity (unless invited) permitted on their territory. However, Denmark allowed the US to maintain an existing base, Thule Air Base (now Pituffik Space Base), in Greenland.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, France pursued a military strategy of independence from NATO under a policy dubbed "Gaullo-Mitterrandism". Nicolas Sarkozy negotiated the return of France to the integrated military command and the Defence Planning Committee in 2009, the latter being disbanded the following year. France remains the only NATO member outside the Nuclear Planning Group and unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, will not commit its nuclear-armed submarines to the alliance.

Membership aspirations

As of March 2024^[update], three additional states have formally informed NATO of their membership aspirations: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine.

• NATO members agreed at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Georgia and Ukraine "will become members of NATO in the future".
• Bosnia and Herzegovina was invited by NATO to join the Membership Action Plan (MAP) in April 2010.

Withdrawal

No state has ever withdrawn from NATO, but some dependencies of member states have not requested membership after becoming independent:

• Cyprus (independence from the United Kingdom in 1960)
• Algeria (independence from France in 1962)
• Malta (independence from the United Kingdom in 1964)

Military personnel

The following list is constructed from The Military Balance, published annually by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Numbers of military personnel

Country	Active	Reserve	Para­mili­tary	Total	Per 1,000 capita		Ref.
					total	active
Albania	5,350	2,100	2,150	9,600	3.1	1.7
Belgium	23,500	5,900	0	29,400	2.5	2
Bulgaria	36,950	3,000	0	39,950	5.9	5.4
Canada	62,300	29,100	5,800	97,200	2.5	1.6
Croatia	16,800	21,000	3,000	40,800	9.8	4
Czech Republic	26,600	4,200	0	30,800	2.8	2.5
Denmark	13,100	44,200	0	57,300	9.6	2.2
Estonia	7,100	20,000	21,200	48,300	40.5	5.9
Finland	23,850	233,000	2,900	259,750	46.2	4.2
France	202,200	38,500	95,100	335,800	4.9	3
Germany	179,850	34,100	0	213,950	2.5	2.1
Greece	132,000	289,000	7,400	428,400	41	12.6
Hungary	32,150	20,000	0	52,150	5.3	3.3
Iceland	0	0	250	250	0.7	0
Italy	161,850	14,500	178,600	354,950	5.8	2.7
Latvia	6,600	16,000	0	22,600	12.5	3.7
Lithuania	16,100	12,950	18,400	47,450	18.1	6.1
Luxembourg	900	0	600	1,500	2.2	1.3
Montenegro	2,710	2,800	4,100	9,610	16	4.5
Netherlands	33,650	6,350	6,500	46,500	2.6	1.9
North Macedonia	8,000	4,850	7,600	20,450	9.6	3.7
Norway	25,400	40,000	0	65,400	11.9	4.6
Poland	164,100	37,500	14,300	215,900	5.6	4.2
Portugal	21,500	23,500	22,600	67,600	6.6	2.1
Romania	69,900	55,000	57,000	181,900	10	3.9
Slovakia	12,800	0	0	12,800	2.3	2.3
Slovenia	6,200	950	0	7,150	3.4	3
Spain	122,200	13,800	80,500	216,500	4.6	2.6
Sweden	14,850	21,500	0	36,350	3.4	1.4
Turkey	355,200	378,700	160,800	894,700	10.6	4.2
United Kingdom	141,100	70,450	0	211,550	3.1	2.1
United States	1,315,600	797,200	0	2,112,800	6.2	3.8
NATO	3,240,410	2,233,850	688,800	6,163,060	6.3	3.3

Military expenditures

1. United States (65.6%)
2. All other NATO countries total (34.4%)