Colombia Trivia
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49 free Colombia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
44 free Colombia trivia questions with answers. Colombia is the only South American country with both a Caribbean and a Pacific coast, and this quiz covers the whole of it. Forty-four questions run through the geography (the third-highest capital in the world, the River of Five Colours, the tallest palms on Earth), the history (Bolívar and the Battle of Boyacá, the loss of Panama, the Armero tragedy, the 2016 peace deal that won a Nobel Prize) and the things Colombia exports to the world: coffee, emeralds, cumbia and vallenato, Gabriel García Márquez, Shakira and Fernando Botero. There are questions on food and drink (bandeja paisa, ajiaco, aguardiente), on the national sport that involves gunpowder, on Cartagena's walls and Medellín's cable cars, on cyclists Egan Bernal and Nairo Quintana, on James Rodríguez's Golden Boot and on Disney's Encanto. Easy ones ask about the flag and the currency; the hard ones want the year Cartagena was founded and the plant that turns Caño Cristales red. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and other reference sources, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Before Colombia took Columbus's name, what was it called under Spanish rule?
New Granada
New Granada survived independence: after Gran Colombia broke up, the country went by that name and only became Colombia in 1863.
Q 02Which 1819 battle, won by Simón Bolívar, secured Colombia's independence from Spain?
Boyacá
Boyacá came after Bolívar's army marched from the plains of Casanare over the Andes and took the Spanish by surprise.
Q 03Which country broke away from Colombia in 1903?
Panama
Panama broke away after Colombia's congress rejected a US canal treaty, and US warships backed the breakaway.
Q 04Colombia's currency shares its name with several other Latin American countries. What is it?
The peso
Its ISO code is COP; a coffee in Bogotá runs to a few thousand of them.
Q 05Which US TV series was adapted from a hit Colombian telenovela?
Ugly Betty
Ugly Betty came from Yo soy Betty, la fea, a telenovela so popular it was also remade in Mexico, India and Germany.
Q 06Besides Bolivia's two capitals, which South American capital sits higher than Bogotá?
Quito
Quito, about 2,850 m up, tops Bogotá, and FIFA's 2007 ban on internationals above 2,500 m would have barred both before protests got it suspended.
Q 07Which Spanish conquistador founded Bogotá in 1538 after conquering the Muisca?
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada soon found rival conquistadors Belalcázar and Federmann camped within sight of his men, each claiming the land.
Q 08Found in a cave in 1969, Bogotá's Muisca raft is traditionally linked to which legend?
El Dorado
El Dorado began with accounts of a ruler said to cover himself in gold dust and wash it off in a sacred lake, later tied to Lake Guatavita.
Q 09In which Colombian city did Simón Bolívar die in 1830?
Santa Marta
Santa Marta was not meant to be his last stop: Bolívar had resigned and was heading for exile in Europe when he died there.
Q 10Which privateer held Cartagena for ransom in 1586?
Francis Drake
Francis Drake left with a ransom, and raids like his pushed Spain to ring Cartagena and its bay with fortifications.
Q 11Which one-eyed, one-legged Spanish commander defended Cartagena against Admiral Vernon in 1741?
Blas de Lezo
Blas de Lezo's defenders forced Vernon to retreat, though British workshops had already struck medals celebrating a victory that never came.
Q 12Medellín, Colombia's second city, is nicknamed the City of what?
Eternal Spring
Eternal Spring fits: Medellín sits about 1,500 m up in the Aburrá Valley, so it stays mild despite lying near the equator.
Q 13What kind of transport began linking Medellín's hillside barrios to the metro in 2004?
Cable cars
Cable cars, which researchers have linked to sharp drops in crime and violence in the neighbourhoods they serve.
Q 21What is the trademark of Boterismo, the style of Medellín-born artist Fernando Botero?
Figures of exaggerated volume
Figures of exaggerated volume were Botero's hallmark, and in 2000 he gave more than 100 of his works, plus Picassos and Chagalls he owned, to Bogotá's Museo Botero.
Q 22Which fictional farmer has long been the face of Colombian coffee advertising?
Juan Valdez
Juan Valdez was played by Carlos Sánchez for nearly four decades until 2006, when a real coffee grower was chosen to take over the role.
Q 23Colombia's Muzo, Coscuez and Chivor mines are famous for which gemstone?
Emeralds
Q 14Who parades through Medellín carrying huge floral displays on their backs during the Feria de las Flores?
Silleteros
Silleteros carry their flowers on silletas, frames that recall how peasants once carried their products on their backs.
Q 15In 2003 UNESCO named which Colombian festival a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage?
The Barranquilla Carnival
The Barranquilla Carnival's oldest parade, the Battle of Flowers, was first held in 1903 to celebrate the end of the Thousand Days' War.
Q 16The hooded Marimonda costume of Colombia's biggest carnival resembles a cross between which two animals?
A monkey and an elephant
Its floppy ears and long nose were meant to mock the city's elite.
Q 17In which town was Gabriel García Márquez born in 1927?
Aracataca
Aracataca voted in 2006 on renaming itself Aracataca-Macondo, and over 90% said yes, but too few people voted for the change to pass.
Q 18García Márquez's 1982 Nobel Prize honoured which style of fiction?
Magical realism
Magical realism runs through One Hundred Years of Solitude, where the town of Macondo loses its memory to an insomnia plague.
Q 19Shakira was born in which Colombian city?
Barranquilla
Barranquilla is Shakira's birthplace, and she was once turned down for her school choir, her voice likened to a goat's.
Q 20Which single became Shakira's first number one on the Billboard Hot 100?
Hips Don't Lie
Hips Don't Lie reworked Wyclef Jean's 'Dance Like This' and joined Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 only on a reissue, after the album had come out.
Emeralds from Colombia were traded abroad by the Spanish, who valued gold and silver more, and so reached royalty across Europe and Asia.
Q 24Caño Cristales, the 'River of Five Colours' in Meta department, turns red because of what?
An aquatic plant
An aquatic plant, Macarenia clavigera, gives the red, and when the river dries up in the dry season it clings on to the rocks rather than dying.
Q 25Colombia's national sport, tejo, involves throwing a metal disc at a clay board fitted with what?
Packets of gunpowder
Packets of gunpowder, called mechas, go off with a bang when hit, and tejo is widely believed to descend from a Muisca game played with golden discs.
Q 26On the Colombian flag, which colour occupies the entire top half?
Yellow
Yellow fills the top half; one telling says Francisco de Miranda took the colours from a talk with Goethe, another from Catherine the Great's hair, eyes and lips.
Q 27Colombia's flag closely resembles those of which two countries?
Ecuador and Venezuela
Ecuador and Venezuela fly near-copies because all three flags descend from the flag of Gran Colombia, the union they once shared.
Q 28Colombia's national tree, found in the Cocora Valley, holds what world record?
Tallest palm
It can reach 45 metres and occasionally 60, and has been legally protected since 1985.
Q 29Colombia's national flower, an orchid, was chosen partly because its lip shows what?
The colours of the flag
The colours of the flag on its central petal helped Emilio Robledo pick Cattleya trianae in 1936, as did its name honouring botanist José Jerónimo Triana.
Q 30Which volcano's 1985 eruption sent mudflows that buried Armero, killing some 23,000?
Nevado del Ruiz
Nevado del Ruiz gave weeks of warning, yet Armero's evacuation was called off when the volcano went quiet, hours before the mudflows struck.