Nicaragua

Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is a country in Central America covering 130,370 square kilometers, the largest by area in the region and, with a population of 7,097,329 as of 2026, its third-most populous, bordered by Honduras, the Caribbean Sea, Costa Rica and the Pacific Ocean, with Managua, Central America's fourth-largest city, as its capital and largest city. Originally inhabited by various Indigenous cultures, the region was conquered by the Spanish Empire in the sixteenth century and gained independence from Spain in 1821; the Caribbean Mosquitia region followed a separate path as an independent kingdom under British protection until the 1860 Treaty of Managua brought it into union with Nicaragua. Since independence Nicaragua has undergone political unrest, dictatorship, American occupation and fiscal crisis, along with the Nicaraguan Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and the Contra War of the 1980s; though nominally a unitary presidential republic, it has experienced significant democratic backsliding since 2007 under President Daniel Ortega, producing large 2018 protests and a subsequent crackdown, and since the 2021 election it has been widely described as an authoritarian dictatorship, with national elections effectively canceled in 2026. Nicaragua, known as the land of lakes and volcanoes and home to the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, the second-largest tropical rainforest in the Americas, is a developing country with one of the lowest GDP per capita figures in Latin America and was ranked the second-most corrupt country in the region in 2025; it is a founding member of the United Nations and belongs to the Non-Aligned Movement and other regional bodies.