Azerbaijan Map

Azerbaijan is the largest and most populous of the three South Caucasus states, with 86,600 km² and about 10.4 million people (UN World Population Prospects, 2025 estimate). It stretches from the crest of the Greater Caucasus, where it borders Russia's Dagestan, down to the Caspian Sea, with Georgia to the north-west, Armenia to the west and Iran to the south. A separate piece of territory, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, lies beyond Armenia and borders Iran and, along a short stretch of about 17 km, Turkey. Since September 2023 the government in Baku controls all of its internationally recognised territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh, for the first time since the early 1990s.

From the Caucasus to below sea level

The Greater Caucasus fills the north. Its highest point in Azerbaijan, Bazardüzü (4,466 m), lies on the Russian border, and the mountain village of Khinalug, at about 2,300 m, is one of the highest permanently inhabited settlements in the Caucasus. The Lesser Caucasus runs along the western border with Armenia and includes the Karabakh highlands. In between, the Kura-Aras Lowland is a broad, semi-arid basin where the Kura and Aras rivers meet before flowing into the Caspian; much of it lies below sea level, as the Caspian surface itself sits about 28 m below the ocean. Cotton, grain and irrigated orchards are grown here.

Baku sits on the Absheron Peninsula, which juts into the Caspian like a hook. It is the oldest oil-producing area in the country, a landscape of nodding pumps, salt lakes and burning gas seeps such as Yanar Dag. Further south, the Talysh Mountains and the Lankaran Lowland along the Iranian border are warm and wet, with tea plantations and the relict Hyrcanian forests.

Mud volcanoes and fire

Azerbaijan has several hundred mud volcanoes, more than any other country, most of them around Gobustan south of Baku and on the Absheron. The same gas that feeds them made the region a centre of fire worship: the Ateshgah at Surakhani, now a museum, was used by Hindu and Zoroastrian worshippers into the 19th century. Gobustan is also known for more than 6,000 rock carvings, some dating back over 10,000 years.

Climate and seasons

The country is often said to have nine of the world's eleven climate types. Baku is dry and very windy, with hot summers around 30-35°C and mild winters; the Caspian wind known as the khazri can be fierce. The lowlands are hot and dry in summer, the mountains snowy in winter, and Lankaran humid and subtropical. April to June and September to October are the best months to travel, especially for the mountain towns of Sheki, Gabala and Guba.

Regions, cities and Karabakh

Since a 2021 reform, Azerbaijan has been grouped into 14 economic regions, which contain its districts (rayonlar) and cities of republican status, plus the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. Population figures below are city-proper estimates for 2024 from the State Statistics Committee.

• Baku - About 2.3 million people. The capital, on a bay of the Absheron, with the walled Icherisheher old town and the Maiden Tower beside the Flame Towers and the seafront boulevard.
• Sumgait - About 427,000. A Soviet-planned chemical and industrial city on the Caspian 30 km north of Baku.
• Ganja - About 331,000. The historic city of the west, birthplace of the 12th-century Persian-language poet Nizami Ganjavi.
• Mingachevir - About 103,000. Built around the dam and reservoir on the Kura that supply much of the country's hydropower.
• Nakhchivan - About 97,000. Capital of the exclave, linked to the rest of the country by air and by roads through Iran.
• Shaki - About 65,000. A caravan town in the Caucasus foothills, famous for the painted 18th-century Palace of the Shaki Khans.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian-populated autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan, came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces after the 1988-94 war, together with seven surrounding districts; several hundred thousand Azerbaijanis were displaced. Azerbaijan regained those districts and part of Karabakh in and after the 2020 war, and in September 2023 retook the remainder; almost all of the roughly 100,000 ethnic Armenians who lived there left, and the self-declared Armenian authorities dissolved at the start of 2024. Azerbaijan is now rebuilding towns such as Shusha and Aghdam and resettling former residents. Armenia and Azerbaijan initialled a peace agreement in Washington in August 2025, alongside a plan for a transit route across Armenia's Syunik province to Nakhchivan; as of October 2026 it had not been signed.

Oil, gas and the Middle Corridor

Around 1900 the Baku fields produced roughly half of the world's oil. Today offshore fields such as Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli and the Shah Deniz gas field supply the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to the Mediterranean and the Southern Gas Corridor to Turkey and Europe, and hydrocarbons dominate exports. GDP per capita was about US$7,400 in 2025 (World Bank). The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway and the port of Alat make Azerbaijan a key link on the trans-Caspian "Middle Corridor" between China, Central Asia and Europe. Baku hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012, the first European Games in 2015, Formula One races since 2016 and the COP29 climate conference in 2024.

Azerbaijani is a Turkic language, written in the Latin alphabet since 1991. Most of the population is Shia Muslim, though the state is constitutionally secular. Azerbaijan has five UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Baku's walled city with the Shirvanshahs' Palace and Maiden Tower, the Gobustan rock art landscape, the historic centre of Shaki with the Khan's Palace, the Hyrcanian forests and the cultural landscape of Khinalug. Mugham music and the art of carpet weaving are on UNESCO's intangible heritage lists.