# World 2026 scenario provenance

The title identifies the scenario year, not the vintage of a new boundary survey.

- Natural Earth 1:10m admin-0 countries, GBR point of view, version 5.1.1 (the same source and conventions as Europe 2026), plus the default-view Kosovo polygon. Public domain: https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/
- Natural Earth populated places simple, version 5.1.2, for capitals and major cities. Fixed capitals where the source's choice differs from the seat of government used in game: Astana, Sucre, Amsterdam, Pretoria, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Taipei, Pristina, Kuala Lumpur, Yamoussoukro, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, Juba and Yaren.
- 197 playable countries. Dependencies and overseas territories join the state that governs them (for example Greenland with Denmark, Puerto Rico with the United States, New Caledonia with France, Hong Kong and Macau with China). Kosovo, Taiwan and Palestine are separate and status-qualified. Somaliland is part of Somalia and Northern Cyprus part of Cyprus (UK point of view). Abkhazia and South Ossetia are part of Georgia and are drawn with disputed-status dashes. Ukraine includes Crimea.
- Western Sahara and Bir Tawil start as unclaimed land that any neighbour can settle. Antarctica, sub-Antarctic islands and uninhabited reefs are omitted.

Projection: Equal Earth (equal-area), central meridian 11°E, cut at 169°W through the Bering Strait. Latitude crop 56°S–83.7°N. Geometry simplified at 0.05 game cells with topology preservation. Mountain ranges, deserts, tundra and ice are illustrative zones, not an elevation or climate survey.

Flags: current national flags from Wikimedia Commons, chosen through Wikidata (P41, best rank, by ISO 3166-1 alpha-3). See ../flags/SOURCES.md.

Rebuild with `python scripts/prepare-world.py` (build-time pyshp, shapely and pyproj in ../geo-deps) and `node scripts/fetch-world-flags.mjs`.