What counts as a country
The UN has 193 member states and two observer states, the Vatican and Palestine. Many people count exactly these 195. Travel produces exceptions quickly, though. Greenland is formally part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and a trip there has little in common with a weekend in Copenhagen.
The Travelers’ Century Club, open to people who have visited at least a hundred places on its list, also counts territories and islands separately. Its list has about 330 entries.
Pick a rule and stick to it. Two are common. Either a country counts once you have spent a night there, or leaving the airport is enough. A connection in Doha without leaving the terminal usually does not make the list.
One flag for each country
In MapiGO, create a group such as “Countries visited”. Click the map roughly in the middle of the country and choose Add marker. In the icon picker, switch to the Flag tab and type the country’s name. The pin turns into a flag, so a zoomed-out map shows at once where you have been.
Set the Countries category and enter the date of your first visit. One sentence in the note is enough: who you travelled with, or which city came first. A few years later it is hard to remember whether your first time in Spain was Valencia or Barcelona.
A list with dates
The group lists countries in an order you can change with the Organize button. On the example map, Poland sits at the top: the home country, added without a date. Below it, the flags run from the most recent visit, Norway in June 2025, then Portugal and Morocco. Czechia, from a school trip in 2014, is at the very bottom.
Should your home country count? Some people leave it out, others add it straight away. Your rule decides this as well.
Keeping count
Every marker in the Countries category counts towards a badge in your profile, under Challenges. With 27 countries the bar reads 27 of 40, which tells you how far the next level is. Only markers in that category count, so cities and sights from your trips do not inflate the number.
Scratch map or an app
A scratch map hangs in the hallway where every guest sees it. It does not record when you were in each country, though. Large countries are awkward too: after a week in the western fjords, scratching off all of Norway feels like cheating.
In the app, you can add cities, places you stayed and sights from a specific trip beneath a country’s flag. On the example map, the flag of Portugal sits next to a group with five days in Lisbon and Sintra.
You can have both. When you are standing at the scratch map and cannot remember whether Slovenia was 2022 or 2023, the date is in the note.
Show the map to friends
On your profile, click Share map and copy the link. Someone without an account will see the flags and all public groups. Groups locked as private stay hidden.
You can also embed the flag map on your own blog. The code is in the same window, on the Embed tab.