Mexico map with states

All states of Mexico

Sorted alphabetically. Population is from the 2020 INEGI census; area in square kilometres. Click a state for its map, or its capital for the city map. The 32 entities cover 1,960,682 km² and held 126,014,024 people in 2020, an average of 64 per km².

How the federal entities are organised

Mexico is a federal republic of 31 states and one capital entity, listed in Article 43 of the 1917 constitution. Each state has its own constitution, a single-chamber congress and a governor elected for six years with no re-election, and each is divided into municipios — municipalities, which are closer to US counties than to towns, since one municipality normally contains a main town and the countryside around it. There are 2,475 of them nationally.

They are distributed very unevenly. Oaxaca alone has 570, more than a fifth of the national total and a survival of village-level self-government; most of them elect their authorities under usos y costumbres, customary indigenous law recognised by the state since 1995. At the other end, Baja California Sur has five and Baja California seven, both states that were sparsely settled federal territories within living memory. Mexico City is the exception to the whole system: it has no municipalities but 16 alcaldías or boroughs, which unlike municipalities cannot levy their own property tax.

How the map has changed since 1824

The federal constitution of 1824 divided the new republic into 19 states, four territories and a federal district carved out around the capital. The map then changed for a century. Texas seceded in 1836; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 transferred roughly half the national territory to the United States, fixing the line now shown on the border map. Inside the surviving territory, states were carved out of larger ones: Guerrero in 1849 from parts of the State of Mexico, Puebla and Michoacán; Campeche out of Yucatán in 1863; Hidalgo and Morelos out of the State of Mexico in 1869. Coahuila and Nuevo León, briefly merged, separated again in 1868.

The 1917 constitution listed 28 states, two territories and the Federal District, and since then the map has changed only four times. Baja California became the 29th state in January 1952. Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo — the last two federal territories, the first a desert peninsula, the second created out of Yucatán in 1902 to control the chicle and mahogany trade — became states on 8 October 1974. The fourth change was the 2016 reform that turned the Federal District into Mexico City, a federal entity with its own constitution, its own congress and a claim on the same rights as a state.

The most populous states

Two-thirds of Mexicans live in the twelve states below. Density is people per square kilometre, calculated from the 2020 census.

The State of Mexico is the most populous entity and wraps around Mexico City on three sides; taken together the two hold about 26 million people, a fifth of the country, in less than 1.3% of its area. The spread in density is the widest of any comparable country: Mexico City has about 6,163 people per km², Baja California Sur has 11, and Durango and Chihuahua about 15.

Largest and smallest states

The five largest states — Chihuahua, Sonora, Coahuila, Durango, Oaxaca — cover 41% of the country, and the first four of them are arid or semi-arid northern states with fewer people between them than Mexico City. The five smallest — Mexico City, Tlaxcala, Morelos, Aguascalientes, Colima — are all in the centre or centre-west and together take up less than 1.1% of the national territory. Chihuahua is 165 times the size of Mexico City and larger than the United Kingdom.

Coasts, borders and landlocked states

Seventeen states have a coast and 15 do not. Eleven front the Pacific, from Baja California down to Chiapas; six front the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean — Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo — of which the first five face the Gulf proper and only Quintana Roo faces the Caribbean. The national coastline is about 11,100 km, and Baja California Sur holds the longest share of it at roughly 2,100 km.

The 15 landlocked states are Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Mexico City, the State of Mexico, Morelos, Nuevo León, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas — a solid block running from the northern border down through the central plateau. Six states meet the United States along 3,145 km of frontier, and four meet Guatemala or Belize in the south-east. The country spans four time zones, though since 2022 most of it no longer changes clocks; the time zones map shows which state is on which, and the physical map shows the mountain ranges that explain most of the boundaries.

How the states are grouped

INEGI does not define official regions, but these groupings are used in planning and by travellers. They follow geography, climate and travel patterns rather than state lines, so several states appear in more than one. Each has its own map:

• Yucatán PeninsulaYucatán, Quintana Roo, Campeche
• Riviera MayaCancún to Tulum, Quintana Roo
• Baja California PeninsulaBaja California, Baja California Sur
• Pacific CoastSinaloa to Chiapas
• Gulf CoastTamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche
• Central MexicoMexico City, State of Mexico, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo
• El BajíoGuanajuato, Querétaro, Aguascalientes, parts of Jalisco
• Northern MexicoChihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Sonora, Durango, Tamaulipas
• Southern MexicoOaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero
• Sierra MadreOccidental, Oriental and del Sur ranges

Questions about the states of Mexico

How many states does Mexico have?

Thirty-one states plus Mexico City, which together make up the 32 federal entities named in Article 43 of the constitution. The count has not changed since 1974, when Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo were raised from territories.

Is Mexico City a state?

Not formally, but it functions like one. Until 2016 it was the Distrito Federal; the 2016 reform made it a federal entity with its own constitution and 16 alcaldías instead of municipalities. It is counted as one of the 32 entities.

What are the newest Mexican states?

Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo, both raised from federal territories to states on 8 October 1974. Baja California became a state in 1952.

Which state has the most municipalities?

Oaxaca, with 570 of the country's 2,475 municipalities — a legacy of indigenous communal governance, and more than a fifth of the national total. Baja California Sur has the fewest, five.

Which Mexican states border the United States?

Six: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. See the border map.