Geographic Center
Find the geographic center of any country, state, or region. Powered by OpenStreetMap. Free, runs in your browser.
Try these
United States
Australia
Brazil
Russia
Antarctica
California
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "geographic center" mean?
The geographic center of a region is the centre of its bounding polygon — the centroid you'd get by balancing the shape on a pin. For most countries this is the same point reported on maps as "geographical centre". Note this differs from the capital city (which is just where the government sits) and from the population-weighted centre (which is biased toward big cities).
How is the center calculated here?
The tool calls our geocoder to fetch the region's bounding box from OpenStreetMap (the extent field, which is [minLng, minLat, maxLng, maxLat]). It then takes the box center. This is the standard fast approximation used by most mapping libraries; for the exact polygon centroid the difference is usually only a few kilometres.
Why is the center of the USA in Kansas?
Because the contiguous USA's landmass balances near Lebanon, Kansas (39°50'N 98°35'W) — a well-known roadside attraction. Including Alaska and Hawaii shifts the centroid slightly north-west. This tool returns the center of the full territory you specify.
Can I find the center of an arbitrary region?
Yes — type any country, state, county, or city. The geocoder will resolve it and the tool will compute the center of its bounding box. For sub-national regions, add the parent (e.g. "Bavaria, Germany") to disambiguate.