Blank map of Mexico

How to print

Use your browser's print command; the header and footer are hidden and the map prints at 600 px tall, which fits Letter and A4 in portrait. For a larger poster, zoom the map to the section you need first — the printed area follows what is on screen.

The borders are drawn from a boundary file rather than from a picture, so they stay sharp at any zoom, and there is no base map underneath: nothing but the outlines reaches the paper. Print in greyscale and run two copies, one to write on and one to keep as the answer sheet. For a class set, reprint zoomed to one area at a time: the Yucatán Peninsula, the Baja California Peninsula and the small entities of Central Mexico lose the most detail at national scale. On screen, clicking a state reveals its name, which makes the map self-marking.

Study checklist

Learn the states in this order; it follows the coasts and then fills the interior, which is how most people retain them.

1. Northern border, west to east: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas.
2. Pacific coast, north to south: Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas.
3. Gulf and Caribbean: Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo.
4. Interior north: Durango, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Aguascalientes.
5. Centre: Guanajuato, Querétaro, Hidalgo, State of Mexico, Mexico City, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Puebla.

Check your answers on the labelled map of Mexican states. Landlocked states to remember: Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Mexico City, State of Mexico, Morelos, Nuevo León, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas — 15 of the 32.

The order matters. The border and the two coasts are lines you can trace without knowing a single name, and each of the 20 entities on them has a fixed neighbour on either side, so a missing name shows up at once. The 12 interior entities are smaller, more irregular and have no coast to anchor them; leaving them last means placing them into a frame that is already filled.

Answer key: the 32 entities

Areas are INEGI figures. The last column is the shortest thing worth remembering about each outline: read down it once with the labelled map open, then cover it and fill the blank sheet.

Mnemonics and the usual confusions

The two Bajas. Baja California is the northern half of the peninsula and Baja California Sur the southern half — Sur means south. The border between them runs along the 28th parallel and is dead straight. The north is the smaller of the two (71,450 km²) but holds 3,769,020 people against 798,447 in the south, the smallest population of any state.

Three things called Mexico. The country is Mexico; Mexico City is the capital, a federal entity of 1,495 km²; the State of Mexico is a separate state wrapping the capital on the north, west and east, run from Toluca and holding 16,992,418 people, more than any other entity. On the blank map the capital is the small shape enclosed on three sides.

The small Bajío cluster. Guanajuato (30,607 km²), Querétaro (11,691 km²) and Aguascalientes (5,616 km²) sit close together north-west of the capital and are easy to swap. Guanajuato and Querétaro share a border; Aguascalientes touches neither, because Zacatecas and Jalisco run between. All three are in the El Bajío.

Neighbour counts. Four states border only two others: Aguascalientes, Colima, Yucatán and Quintana Roo. They are worth naming, because a state with two neighbours has almost nowhere to go wrong. Mexico City also touches two (the State of Mexico and Morelos) but is not a state, and the two Bajas touch one each: each other. Guerrero and Querétaro touch five.

Sizes. Chihuahua, 247,455 km², is larger than the ten smallest entities together; Tlaxcala, 3,991 km², is the smallest state.

Quizzing yourself on capitals

The same sheet doubles as a capitals test: write the capital instead of the state name, or both. Eleven states share their name with their capital — Aguascalientes, Campeche, Chihuahua, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas — so a third of the sheet comes free. The rest are where marks are lost. Veracruz is governed from Xalapa, not from the port of Veracruz; Quintana Roo from Chetumal, not Cancún; Guerrero from Chilpancingo, not Acapulco; Sinaloa from Culiacán, not Mazatlán; Baja California from Mexicali, not Tijuana. In at least five states the capital is not the largest city: Baja California, Chihuahua, Guerrero, Quintana Roo and Tamaulipas. Every capital is in the table above and on the map of Mexican cities.

Questions about the blank map

How many states does Mexico have?

Thirty-one states plus Mexico City, which is a federal entity of equal standing but is not a state. The usual answer to a quiz question is 32 federal entities, and that is what this outline map draws. The official name of the country is the United Mexican States, Estados Unidos Mexicanos.

Which Mexican states are landlocked?

Fifteen of the 32 entities have no coast: Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Mexico City, the State of Mexico, Morelos, Nuevo León, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas. Nuevo León is the one people miss, because it reaches to within about 130 km of the Gulf without touching it.

How do I print a blank map of Mexico?

Use your browser's print command on this page. The site header, footer and navigation are hidden in print, and the map prints about 600 px tall, which fits Letter and A4 in portrait. Zoom first if you want a single region at poster size, because the printed area is whatever is on screen.

What is the easiest way to learn the Mexican states?

Learn the edges before the middle: the six border states west to east, then the Pacific coast north to south, then the Gulf and Caribbean. That fixes 20 of the 32 in place, and the 12 interior entities can then only go in the gaps that are left. Check yourself against the labelled state map.