Map of Lesotho

Lesotho is located in Africa. Its territory lies in the southern and eastern hemispheres, centred near 29.5° S, 28.5° E. Lesotho is landlocked, enclosed on every side by its 1 neighbour — South Africa — with no coastline of its own. Within Africa, a continent of 54 countries bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, Lesotho is mapped here in full with its borders, capital and key facts.

Landlocked Lesotho is surrounded by the following 1 country. Select any neighbour to open its own map.

Lesotho covers about 30,355 km² (11,720 sq mi). That makes it the 138th-largest country in the world by area and the 43rd-largest in Africa, larger by area than 11 of the continent’s 54 countries.

It is home to a population of roughly 2,116,427, the 146th-largest in the world and the 45th-largest in Africa, accounting for about 0.1% of the continent’s people. With that land area, Lesotho has an average population density of about 70 people per km². Among the 54 countries of Africa it stands 45th by population and 43rd by area.

The seat of government is Maseru, and the official currency is the Lesotho loti (LSL, L), and the main official languages are English and Sotho. Traffic drives on the left, and the country observes the time zone UTC+02:00.

Lesotho carries the ISO country codes LS and LSO, dials on the international calling code +266 and uses the .ls internet domain.

Lesotho shares its land borders with 1 country, each of which is mapped in full on this site. Listed from the most to the least populous, here is how they compare.

Its neighbours are South Africa (capital Pretoria, about 63,100,945 people).

By area, Lesotho is larger than 0 of these neighbours and smaller than 1 of them, which places its size in context along its own frontiers. Open any neighbour above to see its capital, borders and full set of facts on its own map.

The interactive map above is centred on 29.5° S, 28.5° E and opens at zoom level 7, framing Lesotho within Africa. A marker pin sits at the country’s approximate geographic centre; drag the map or use scroll and pinch to move from a regional overview down to the streets of Maseru. The map is drawn from OpenStreetMap data, the same open dataset used across this site, so place names, roads and coastlines stay consistent from one country to the next.

Lesotho lies about 3,274 km from the equator, in the southern and eastern hemispheres of the globe. As a landlocked country, every direction from its borders leads onto neighbouring land rather than the open sea.

Lesotho keeps a single standard time zone, UTC+02:00. That figure is the country’s offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the modern reference that for everyday purposes matches Greenwich Mean Time, so local clocks sit +02:00 relative to UTC before any seasonal daylight saving change.

Lesotho recognises more than one official currency: Lesotho loti (LSL, L) and South African rand (ZAR, R).

The official languages are English and Sotho, which is what appears on signs, documents and many of the place labels you will see on the map.

For practical reference, vehicles drive on the left-hand side of the road, the international dialling code is +266 and websites commonly use the .ls internet domain.

In short, Lesotho is a landlocked country in Africa, sharing land borders with 1 country. Its capital is Maseru. Lesotho has a population of about 2,116,427 and covers around 30,355 km² (11,720 sq mi), ranking it 146th in the world by population and 138th by area. The interactive map, facts table and questions on this page bring those details together in one place for Lesotho.

The flag of Lesotho is composed of three horizontal bands of blue, white and green in the ratio of 3:4:3. A black mokorotlo — a Basotho hat — is centered in the white band.

The flag of Lesotho is shown above as an emoji, rendered by your device’s own font; see it alongside every other nation on the flags of the world page.