Autonomous Regions of the World
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40 free Autonomous Regions of the World trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
An autonomous region is a part of a country that runs much of its own affairs: its own parliament, its own laws, sometimes its own currency, passports or football team. Some won that status after wars or referendums, others inherited it from empires that have long since gone, and a few are still arguing about whether autonomy is enough. This quiz travels through the best-known examples and some surprising ones: Danish islands in the North Atlantic, the special administrative regions and autonomous regions of China, Spain's autonomous communities and cities, Italy's special-statute regions, Russian republics, and self-governing corners of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Each answer comes with a short explanation of how the place came to govern itself. It suits geography fans, students of politics and anyone who has wondered why a map shows a single country while the locals fly a different flag.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which autonomous Danish territory quit the European Economic Community in 1985 over fishing rules?
Greenland
Greenland walked out because it rejected Europe's commercial fishing regulations and a ban on sealskin products, while Denmark itself stayed a member.
Q 02Which Chinese territory, run by Portugal until 1999, has a far bigger gambling trade than Las Vegas?
Macau
Macau is known as the gambling capital of the world, and its handover in December 1999 ended 442 years of Portuguese rule.
Q 03Which autonomous monastic peninsula in Greece bars all women from entering, by law and tradition?
Mount Athos
Mount Athos is governed by its own community of Orthodox monks, who hold the mountain to be the garden of the Mother of God and out of bounds to all other women.
Q 04Which semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, with its own president, was Freddie Mercury's birthplace?
Zanzibar
Zanzibar is where the Queen singer was born Farrokh Bulsara, in Stone Town; he fled to Britain with his family at 17 during a revolution.
Q 05Which Chinese region kept its own dollar and driving on the left after Britain's 1997 handover?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong changed hands at midnight on 1 July 1997 after 156 years of British rule, with China guaranteeing its economic and political systems for 50 years.
Q 06Which self-governing Danish archipelago between Iceland and Norway has its own FIFA football team?
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands run their own affairs apart from defence, policing, justice and currency, and their team won its first competitive match by beating Austria 1-0.
Q 07Which Native American nation governs the largest US reservation, in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah?
Navajo
Navajo lands cover more than 27,000 square miles, an area larger than West Virginia, and are run by a tribal government seated at Window Rock, Arizona.
Q 08Which autonomous region of Portugal, governed from Funchal, was the birthplace of Cristiano Ronaldo?
Madeira
Madeira named its airport after the footballer in 2017, and the bronze bust unveiled with it was widely ridiculed for bearing little likeness to him.
Q 09Which autonomous region of China, established in 1965, draws visitors to the Potala Palace in Lhasa?
Tibet
Tibet's borders as an autonomous region take in only about half of the wider cultural area, and a failed 1959 uprising in Lhasa is marked every year by exiles.
Q 10Which autonomous community of Spain is the home of Euskara, Europe's only known language isolate?
Basque Country
The Basque Country's language is ringed by Romance languages yet unrelated to any of them, and its parliament sits in Vitoria-Gasteiz rather than larger Bilbao.
Q 11Which Spanish autonomous community, governed from Barcelona, held a disputed 2017 independence vote?
Catalonia
Catalonia's parliament declared independence weeks after the vote, and Madrid answered by imposing direct rule and dissolving the chamber.
Q 12By what nickname is Scotland's parliament, reconvened in 1999 after almost 300 years, usually known?
Holyrood
Holyrood is the Edinburgh district where the parliament's building opened in 2004; the earlier Scottish legislature vanished with the 1707 union with England.
Q 13Which island, the largest in the Mediterranean, became an autonomous region of Italy in May 1946?
Sicily
Sicily won its special status 18 days before the referendum that made Italy a republic, and about a quarter of its people live in and around Palermo.
Q 21Which Indonesian province, devastated by the 2004 tsunami, has special autonomy to apply sharia law?
Aceh
Aceh was the closest land to the earthquake's epicentre, and the later peace deal with separatist rebels traded their disarmament for special autonomy.
Q 22Which autonomous region of Papua New Guinea voted 98 percent for independence in a 2019 referendum?
Bougainville
Bougainville fought a civil war from 1988 to 1998, triggered by conflict over the Panguna mine, that cost up to 20,000 lives.
Q 23Which Muslim-majority autonomous region of the Philippines was founded in 2019 after peace talks?
Bangsamoro
Bangsamoro, a name meaning Moro Nation, replaced an earlier autonomous region that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front had rejected as too weak.
Q 14Which French island, given wider self-rule than other regions, was Napoleon Bonaparte's birthplace?
Corsica
Corsica was rather neglected by the emperor's own government despite being his home; he was born in Ajaccio, and its assembly may exercise limited executive powers.
Q 15Which autonomous community of Spain, governed from Seville, is the country's most populous?
Andalusia
Andalusia seats its High Court of Justice in Granada rather than the capital, and its city of Córdoba once outgrew Constantinople to become Europe's biggest.
Q 16Which autonomous community of Spain is a Mediterranean archipelago governed from Palma on Mallorca?
Balearic Islands
The Balearic Islands fall into two groups: the Gymnesian Islands, chiefly Mallorca and Menorca, and the Pityusic or Pine Islands of Ibiza and Formentera.
Q 17Which self-governing Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea makes its laws in the Tynwald parliament?
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man's parliament is of Viking origin, and in 1881 it became the first national legislature to let women vote in a general election, though not married ones.
Q 18Which Canadian territory was split from the Northwest Territories in 1999 to give Inuit self-rule?
Nunavut
Nunavut is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada, with a landmass almost as large as Mexico.
Q 19Which semi-autonomous region of Iraq, with its parliament in Erbil, fields the Peshmerga forces?
Kurdistan
Kurdistan gained self-rule in 1992, once no-fly zones imposed after the Gulf War had curbed Baghdad's power in the north.
Q 20Which Swedish-speaking Baltic archipelago is an autonomous and demilitarised region of Finland?
Åland
Åland owes its neutral, demilitarised status to the peace treaty that followed the Åland War of the 1850s, and its capital is Mariehamn.
Q 24Which Chinese autonomous region, named for the Uyghur people, is the country's largest by area?
Xinjiang
Xinjiang spans more than 1.6 million square kilometres, which makes it the eighth-largest country subdivision in the world, and is governed from Ürümqi.
Q 25Which neighbouring country shares its name with the Chinese autonomous region governed from Hohhot?
Mongolia
Mongolia's frontier with China runs for two-thirds of its length along the region, which was set up in 1947, two years before the People's Republic itself.
Q 26For which people did the Soviet Union create an autonomous oblast around Birobidzhan in 1934?
Jews
Jews never made up more than about a quarter of the oblast's population, a peak reached in the late 1940s, and the 2021 census counted just 837 there.
Q 27Which mostly German-speaking autonomous province of Italy belonged to Austria-Hungary until 1918?
South Tyrol
South Tyrol was occupied by Italy in November 1918 and annexed the following year; Mussolini's regime then banned German in its schools, yet most people there still speak it.
Q 28Which French Pacific territory voted to stay French in a 2018 poll promised by the Nouméa Accord?
New Caledonia
New Caledonia has a unique legal status with its own chapter in the French Constitution, and 56.7 percent of its voters chose to remain in 2018.
Q 29Which autonomous city of Spain on the North African coast was conquered by Portugal in 1415?
Ceuta
Ceuta fell to a surprise assault led by King John I, which gave Portugal its first foothold on the Strait of Gibraltar.
Q 30Which Russian republic, governed from Kazan, was the last to lose its autonomy deal with Moscow?
Tatarstan
Tatarstan signed its power-sharing treaty in February 1994, and the agreement lapsed in July 2017, ending the special status it alone had kept.