South America has 14 countries and territories. Four of them contain three-quarters of everyone who lives there.

The map above presents the 2026 population of every territory in South America, based on data harvested from Worldometers.

The combined population of South America across all 14 entries is approximately 458 million people.

TL;DR

• Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru together account for approximately 75.6% of South America’s total population of roughly 458 million. 
• Brazil alone holds nearly 46.5% of the entire continent’s population at 212.8 million people
• Venezuela’s official population of 28.5 million significantly understates its pre-crisis size, with an estimated 7 to 8 million people having left the country since 2015 due to economic collapse and political crisis.

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Brazil: Nearly Half a Continent

Brazil’s 2026 population is around 212.8 million. 

That single figure represents approximately 46.5% of South America’s entire population. Colombia, the continent’s second most populous country, has 53,425,635 people (less than a quarter of Brazil’s total). 

Put another way: Brazil is larger than the next four most populous South American countries combined. 

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Colombia’s Double Role

Colombia’s 53.4 million population places it second, but its demographic reality is more complicated than the raw number suggests. 

Colombia hosts the world’s largest Venezuelan migrant population (estimated at over 2.8 million people).

That makes the country both a major South American nation in its own right and the primary absorber of one of the hemisphere’s most significant displacement crises.

Venezuela’s official 2026 population stands at 28,516,896, but it understates what Venezuela’s population would be without the emigration wave of the past decade. 

An estimated 7 to 8 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2015, driven by economic collapse, political repression, and humanitarian crisis. 

Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina have each absorbed significant portions of that displaced population.

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Territories at the Bottom

The four smallest entries on record—Guyana (835,986), Suriname (639,850), French Guiana (313,666), and the Falkland Islands (3,469)—together account for less than 0.4% of South America’s total population. 

Guyana, the continent’s only English-speaking sovereign nation, sits on one of the Western Hemisphere’s largest recent offshore oil discoveries. 

Commercial production began in 2019 and has since made Guyana one of the world’s fastest-growing economies per capita. 

Meanwhile, French Guiana is not an independent country. 

Its 313,666 residents are French citizens living on the South American mainland, subject to EU law, using the Euro, and voting in French elections. 

It is the only EU territory on the South American continent (geographically South American, constitutionally European).

ELI5

South America has about 458 million people, but nearly half of them live in just one country, Brazil.

Four countries in total (Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru) hold about three-quarters of everyone on the continent. 

Venezuela is missing millions of people who left due to its ongoing crisis. And the Falkland Islands, despite having fewer people than a small town, were the subject of a real war between Argentina and Britain.

Source:

Worldometer