New Zealand Trivia
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120 free New Zealand trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
64 free New Zealand trivia questions with answers. New Zealand is a small country with an outsized store of trivia: the first place to give women the vote, the home of the only flightless parrot, the setting for Middle-earth, and the country with a Guinness record for the steepest street. This quiz covers all of it in 120 questions, from the Treaty of Waitangi and the New Zealand Wars to the All Blacks' haka, the Black Caps, Lorde, pavlova and the sheep-to-people ratio. The early questions are easy enough for anyone who has watched a rugby match or seen The Lord of the Rings; the later ones get into Māori place names, Zealandia, the 2016 flag referendum and MMP, the sort of NZ trivia that separates visitors from locals. It works as a solo test or a ready-made round for a pub quiz. Every answer has been checked against a documented source and each question shows its citation and a short explanation after you answer, so the argument about who invented the pavlova can at least be argued from facts.
30 of 120 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital city of New Zealand?
Wellington
Wellington has been the capital since 1865, when Parliament moved there from Auckland for its central position; Auckland remains the largest city by a wide margin.
Q 02Beyond its two main islands, roughly how many smaller islands does New Zealand have?
Over 700
Over 700 smaller islands lie beyond the North and South Islands, from the subtropical Kermadecs to the subantarctic Auckland and Campbell groups; Stewart Island is the largest of them.
Q 03Which Dutch explorer became the first European to sight and record New Zealand, in 1642?
Abel Tasman
He never landed: four of his sailors were killed by Māori in a waka at what he named Murderers' Bay, now Golden Bay.
Q 04Which British explorer became the first European to set foot on and map New Zealand, in 1769?
James Cook
James Cook landed at Poverty Bay in October 1769 from the Endeavour and charted the coastline so accurately that his map stayed in use for decades.
Q 05In which year did British representatives and Māori chiefs sign the Treaty of Waitangi?
1840
The Treaty of Waitangi was first signed on 6 February 1840 at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, and 6 February is now Waitangi Day, the national day.
Q 06In 1893, New Zealand became the first country in the world to do what?
Grant all women the right to vote
The petition Kate Sheppard organised carried around 30,000 signatures, and her portrait has been on the ten-dollar note since 1991.
Q 07New Zealand has three official languages: English, Māori and which other?
Sign language
Sign language gained official status in 2006; Māori had been made official in 1987.
Q 08What is the most common English translation of Aotearoa, the Māori name for New Zealand?
Land of the long white cloud
"Land of the long white cloud" is the standard reading of Aotearoa, from ao (cloud), tea (white) and roa (long); tradition credits the name to the wife of the navigator Kupe.
Q 09The kiwi is the only bird in the world with its nostrils located where?
At the tip of its beak
At the tip of its beak is where the kiwi's nostrils open, unique among birds; it probes the soil and sniffs out worms and grubs by night.
Q 10A kiwi egg can weigh up to roughly what proportion of the female's body weight?
20%
20% is the usual figure: a brown kiwi female of about 2.5 kg lays a single egg of around 450 grams, one of the largest relative to body size of any bird.
Q 11DNA studies show the kiwi's closest living or extinct relatives were which animals?
Madagascar's elephant birds
Madagascar's elephant birds were the kiwi's closest relatives, a 2014 ancient-DNA study found, overturning the old assumption that the kiwi was a small cousin of the moa.
Q 12What is the traditional name of the haka the All Blacks have performed before matches for over a century?
Ka Mate
Ka Mate, composed by the Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha around 1820, has been the All Blacks' haka since their 1905 tour; Kapa o Pango has been performed alongside it since 2005.
Q 13In which three years had the All Blacks won the men's Rugby World Cup as of 2024?
1987, 2011 and 2015
Q 21Auckland is built on a volcanic field that has produced roughly how many volcanic centres?
At least 53
At least 53 volcanic centres make up the Auckland volcanic field; the most recent eruption built Rangitoto Island in the Hauraki Gulf around 1450 AD, well within Māori memory.
Q 22Auckland is home to the world's largest urban population of which group of people?
Polynesians
Polynesians are more numerous in Auckland than in any other city on Earth, with large Samoan and Tongan communities alongside Māori; the city's Māori name Tāmaki Makaurau means Tāmaki desired by many.
Q 23How many Academy Awards did The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King win, from how many nominations?
11 from 11
1987, 2011 and 2015 are the All Blacks' three titles: the 2015 win made them the first team to retain the trophy, and South Africa won the 2019 and 2023 tournaments.
Q 14What is the nickname of the 1905 New Zealand rugby team that won 34 of 35 matches on tour in Britain?
The Originals
The Originals, the 1905-06 touring side, won 34 of their 35 matches, losing only 3-0 to Wales at Cardiff; the name All Blacks took hold on that tour.
Q 15In which trade did Edmund Hillary work with his father and brother before climbing Everest in 1953?
Beekeeping
Beekeeping was the family trade: they ran about 1,600 hives, and the seasonal summer work left his winters free for the mountains.
Q 16Who was the first living New Zealander other than the monarch to appear on its banknotes?
Edmund Hillary
Edmund Hillary was added to the five-dollar note in 1992, pictured with Aoraki / Mount Cook, and remained on it after his death in 2008.
Q 17What is the longest river in New Zealand?
Waikato
The Waikato runs 425 km from the slopes of Mount Ruapehu through Lake Taupō and over Huka Falls to the Tasman Sea; its name means flowing water.
Q 18Lake Taupō, the country's largest lake, sits inside what kind of geological feature?
A volcanic caldera
A volcanic caldera holds the lake: it fills the hollow left by the Oruanui eruption about 25,500 years ago, the most recent supereruption anywhere on Earth.
Q 19How tall is Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain?
3,724 m
3,724 m is the height set by a 2013 survey; the peak stood at 3,764 m until a December 1991 rock avalanche removed about 10 metres, and ice-cap erosion later took off another 30.
Q 20Which superlative does the capital of New Zealand hold among the capitals of the world?
Southernmost of any
Southernmost of any national capital, New Zealand's seat of government sits at about 41°S on Cook Strait, and it also claims to be the windiest city on Earth by average wind speed.
11 from 11 was the clean sweep at the 2004 ceremony, tying Ben-Hur and Titanic for the most wins ever, and it was the first fantasy film to take Best Picture.
Q 24The four red stars on New Zealand's flag represent which constellation?
The Southern Cross
The Southern Cross (Crux) is shown by the four red, white-bordered stars; the design has been in use since 1869 and gained statutory recognition in 1902.
Q 25What share of voters chose to keep New Zealand's existing flag in the 2016 silver-fern referendum?
56.7%
56.7% of valid votes went to the existing flag in March 2016, against 43.3% for Kyle Lockwood's black, white and blue silver fern design.
Q 26The kākāpō holds which pair of records among the world's parrots?
Only flightless and heaviest
"Only flightless and heaviest" describes the kākāpō among parrots: males can reach about 4 kg, and it is also the only parrot that breeds on a lek, with a lifespan thought to exceed 60 years.
Q 27The tuatara has what unusual feature on top of its head?
A third eye
A third eye, the parietal eye, is visible in hatchlings and covered by scales within months; the tuatara is the last survivor of Rhynchocephalia, an order dating back to the Triassic.
Q 28The kiwifruit is native to which country?
China
China is the kiwifruit's homeland: seeds came to New Zealand in 1904 with schoolteacher Isabel Fraser, and locals called it the Chinese gooseberry until exporter Jack Turner coined the name kiwifruit in 1959.
Q 29How many people were killed in the earthquake that struck Christchurch on 22 February 2011?
185
185 people died in the magnitude 6.3 quake, which struck at 12:51 pm and brought down the CTV building, where 115 of the victims were; the cathedral spire also fell.
Q 30Rotorua's famous smell of rotten eggs comes from emissions of which gas?
Hydrogen sulphide
Hydrogen sulphide, seeping from the geothermal field beneath the city, gives Rotorua its rotten-egg smell; the same heat powers the Pōhutu Geyser and the boiling mud pools at Whakarewarewa.