Kuwait Trivia
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46 free Kuwait trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Kuwait is a city-state at the head of the Gulf with the world's most valuable currency, its oldest sovereign wealth fund, the first large-scale desalination plants, and a summer temperature record for all of Asia. It was a pearling and dhow-building port before oil, and its 1990 invasion by Iraq, its liberation and the burning of hundreds of oil wells put it at the centre of the world's attention. This Kuwait trivia quiz covers all of it. Forty-three questions run from geography (Kuwait City, Failaka, Bubiyan, Mutla Ridge, Mitribah) through history (Ikaros and the Greeks, the Bani Utbah and Sabah I, the 1899 agreement with Britain, the pearling collapse, Burgan in 1938, independence in 1961, the invasion, Desert Storm and the oil fires) to politics and culture (the Al Sabah, the National Assembly, women's vote in 2005, the flag, the dinar, machboos, the Kuwait Towers, the "Hollywood of the Gulf") and sport (the 1980 Asian Cup, the 1982 World Cup, Al-Deehani's Olympic gold). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know the Gulf. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name "Kuwait" comes from an Arabic diminutive of Kut, meaning what?
Fortress built near water
Fortress built near water is what kut means, and the diminutive makes Kuwait a 'little fort': the name belonged first to the 18th-century trading town on the bay and only later to the whole country.
Q 02Kuwait has land borders with just two countries: Iraq to the north and west, and which other to the south?
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait long left a slab of desert between them as a shared Neutral Zone; they finally divided it in 1969, yet they still split the revenue from the oil beneath it equally.
Q 03About two in every three people living in Kuwait belong to which group?
Foreign nationals
Foreign nationals, mostly workers from South and Southeast Asia, outnumber Kuwaitis about two to one, and few can ever naturalise: citizenship is kept for families settled in Kuwait before 1920.
Q 04Which Kuwaiti island, inhabited since the Bronze Age, was named Ikaros by the ancient Greeks?
Failaka
Failaka got the name on Alexander the Great's orders, after the Aegean island where Icarus was said to have fallen from the sky, and the ruins of a Greek temple still stand on it.
Q 05Which family has ruled Kuwait since settler clans picked one of its members as sheikh in the 1750s?
Al Sabah
Al Sabah rule began by choice, not conquest: the families who settled the town appointed one of their own, Sabah bin Jaber, as sheikh, and his descendants have held the post ever since.
Q 06In 1899 Kuwait's ruler Mubarak the Great signed a deal handing control of his foreign affairs to which power?
Britain
Britain promised naval protection in return, and the deal suited Mubarak: fearing the Ottomans were about to annex Kuwait, he agreed to cede no land and receive no foreign agents without London's consent.
Q 07Before oil, which luxury trade was the basis of Kuwait's economy until a Japanese invention helped ruin it?
Pearling
Pearling was killed off by Japan's cultured pearls and then the Great Depression, which emptied the market for luxuries; by luck, oil was struck in 1938 just as the old trade was dying.
Q 08In the pre-oil era, Kuwait's craftsmen were known around the coasts of Arabia for making what?
Boats
Boats were the town's other living: a shipbuilding trade grew up to serve Kuwait's long-distance sea merchants, and its wooden craft won a name for quality along the coasts of Arabia.
Q 09Kuwait's oil age began in 1938 with a strike at which field, now ranked the world's second largest?
Burgan
Burgan ranks behind only the Ghawar field across the border, yet the Second World War kept it shut in: development stopped, and no crude was shipped until 1946, eight years after the strike.
Q 10Kuwait's state oil company sells petrol at thousands of European filling stations under which brand name?
Q8
Q8 is a pun you hear when you say it aloud: Kuwait's state oil company bought Gulf Oil's filling stations across western Europe in 1983 and relaunched them under the new name three years later.
Q 11In 1960 Kuwait and four other states met in Baghdad to found which organisation?
OPEC
OPEC was the exporters' answer to the big Western oil companies, which had just cut the price they paid for crude without asking; the five founders, Venezuela among them, banded together to stop it happening again.
Q 12After his army overran Kuwait in August 1990, Saddam Hussein declared the country to be what?
Iraq's 19th province
Iraq's 19th province was an old claim revived: Baghdad had insisted Kuwait was rightfully its territory within a week of Kuwaiti independence in 1961, and backed down only when troops arrived from abroad to deter it.
Q 13Why does Kuwait celebrate its national day on 25 February, not the June independence date?
Q 21In 1993 Kuwaiti authorities foiled a plot to assassinate which former US president on a visit to be honoured?
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush had led the coalition that freed Kuwait and was coming to be thanked; blaming Iraqi intelligence, his successor Bill Clinton fired 23 cruise missiles at its Baghdad headquarters that June.
Q 22At the heart of Kuwaiti social life is the diwaniya, which is what?
A regular gathering of men
A regular gathering of men, held in a room set apart from the family house, where news, business and politics get talked through; Kuwait's pro-democracy movement of 1989 spread from one such evening to the next.
Q 23Most Kuwaiti citizens, like the ruling family, follow which branch of Islam?
The summer heat
The summer heat won out after a single June national day in 1962: from 1963 the party moved to 25 February, the date the emir of the day, Abdullah Al-Salim, had come to the throne in 1950.
Q 14The Kuwait Investment Authority holds what distinction among sovereign wealth funds?
The world's oldest
The world's oldest, it began as an investment board in the City of London, eight years before Kuwait was even independent, to put surplus oil money to work for future generations.
Q 15As of 2026, which Kuwaiti currency unit is the most valuable in the world, at over three US dollars each?
Dinar
Dinar notes break into 1,000 fils rather than 100, and the central bank pegs the rate to a basket of currencies instead of letting it float, which has kept one dinar above three dollars for years.
Q 16Before the 1990 invasion, Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait of what?
Pumping too much oil
Pumping too much oil pushed the price down just when Iraq, deep in debt after its war with Iran, needed every dollar; Baghdad also accused Kuwait of stealing crude from the Rumaila field on the border.
Q 17The US-led campaign to free Kuwait opened in January 1991 with weeks of air strikes under which code name?
Desert Storm
Desert Storm followed Desert Shield, the five-month build-up of coalition troops in the region; after more than five weeks of bombing, the ground assault drove the occupying army out within days.
Q 18Roughly how many Kuwaiti oil wells did retreating Iraqi troops set ablaze in 1991?
Hundreds
Hundreds of wells burned for months under smoke so thick that it blotted out the sun over Kuwait City and cooled the air beneath; the last one was not capped until November.
Q 19Which community, Kuwait's largest foreign group at about 400,000 before the Gulf War, was almost entirely gone by 1992?
Palestinians
Palestinians paid for their leaders' public backing of Saddam Hussein: most who fled the occupation were never allowed back, and many who had stayed were driven out in the weeks after liberation.
Q 20In 2005 Kuwait's parliament gave women the right to do what?
Vote in elections
Vote in elections, and stand in them too: the emir had decreed it back in 1999, only for tribal and Islamist members of the elected chamber to block the change, and no woman won a seat until 2009.
Sunni
Sunni Muslims are the clear majority of citizens and Shia a sizeable minority; the exact shares are outside estimates, because the census does not tell the two apart, and the constitution names only Islam as the state religion.
Q 24Which black shape sits at the hoist of Kuwait's flag?
A trapezium
A trapezium in black, the colour of battles: the flag's four colours are tied to a 13th-century Arab poem that speaks of white deeds, black battles and green lands.
Q 25Before 1961, Kuwait's flag was which two colours, like other Gulf Arab states?
Red and white
Red and white, with the country's name in white Arabic script: Kuwait adopted it early in the First World War, after a friendly warship fired on a Kuwaiti vessel flying the same red Ottoman flag as the enemy.
Q 26Kuwait's parliament building is the work of Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect best known for which landmark?
Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House: Utzon quit that job in 1966 after bitter rows over cost, seven years before it opened; his Kuwait National Assembly was finished in 1982.
Q 27Short of natural fresh water, Kuwait has met most household demand since the 1950s by doing what on a large scale?
Use desalination
Use desalination: until seawater distillation plants went up from the early 1950s, fresh water had to be shipped in from the Shatt al-Arab, and the plants still supply the great bulk of daily needs.
Q 28What verified Asian record did Mitribah in Kuwait set in 2016?
Highest temperature
Highest temperature: logged at 54.0 °C, the reading was accepted only after the World Meteorological Organization had the sensor re-tested, and in 2019 it confirmed 53.9 °C, one of the hottest readings it recognises anywhere.
Q 29Aircraft wrecked a fleeing Iraqi column in 1991 on which nicknamed road?
Highway of Death
Highway of Death was the name given to Highway 80, the road to the Iraqi border, after aircraft caught the retreating column frozen in one vast traffic jam in the war's last days and left the road lined with wrecks.
Q 30Machboos, a traditional Kuwaiti dish, is meat or fish served on a bed of what?
Spiced rice
Spiced rice, usually basmati: the meat is chicken or mutton, but in a country that grew up as a port the topping can also be fish or shellfish from the Gulf.