Seats of the World
Every state that has held a seat in twenty
international organizations, body by body, from 1945 to today.
Each flag is a seat.
Drag the timeline and the seats fill and empty as
states join and leave, while the map shades the members of the year on
screen. Historical states hold their real seats — the Soviet Union until
1991, Czechoslovakia until 1993, the Republic of China in the China seat
until 1971 — and withdrawals and suspensions are modelled rather than
smoothed over.
An independent project. It is not
affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or a publication of any
organization shown, and takes no funding from any of them. Their names
appear only to identify the bodies whose membership is being described. The
emblems beside each name are original drawings made for this site, from the
same map data the atlas itself uses — none of the organizations' own marks
appear anywhere on it. Nothing here should be read as an official record:
where it matters, check the organization's own published list. Built and
maintained by Linda Samsinger.
Sources
A list taken from a published table was used only once
its total matched the organization's own published figure. Departures,
suspensions and successor seats were added by hand.
Known limits
Joining years are recorded to the year , not the day.
Before 1996 the Security Council shows only its five
permanent members.
OAS seats are the participating states: 35 signed the Charter,
but Cuba has been excluded since 1962 and Nicaragua left in 2023.
The map draws today's borders, not the year's.
Found a mistake?
Corrections are welcome. Write to
email with the organization, the country
and the year.
Reuse
The dataset is free to reuse for any purpose,
including commercially, with credit — it is licensed
CC BY 4.0 .
Download it , or take a
ready-made
citation .
Keyboard
← → step back or forward a year
Space play or pause the timeline
Tab enter the chamber — then the arrow keys move between seats
Esc unpin a country, or close a panel
Privacy
No cookies, no analytics, no advertising, and
nothing loaded from anyone else's server — no fonts, no scripts, no
embeds, no trackers. The site keeps one thing in your browser: a note
that you dismissed the opening hint. Nothing is sent anywhere, and
there is nothing to consent to.
Support this project
If the atlas is useful to you and you would like
to help cover the domain and the upkeep, that is very welcome — and
entirely optional.
Who sits in which international organization,
and since when
