Lists and Regions

Our Masterlist is made up of 1301 regions. We divide countries based on 5 Criteria:

• Territory (Size)
• Population
• Cultural Importance (World Heritage) and Cultural Diversity
• Economic Significance
• Tourist Appeal (based on tourist arrivals)

We then seek to divide each country in regions relative to other countries, so that our list of regions is rational and each country gets its relative worth in terms of regions. There are some exceptions for ethnically divided nations (such as Bosnia and Herzegovina) or for small island nations (such as Micronesia). We believe that a total number of about 1,300 regions is optimal – big enough to be challenging, small enough to be achievable.

In 2022 we did some changes to our regions list. Read the details here.

In order for a visit to qualify as valid, a ‘minimal’ visit is required. Nomadmania.com defines a minimal visit as follows.

For international border crossings where there is a border control, clearance of immigration authorities is required, and a visit to the area beyond the immigration area itself is accepted. In the case of regional border crossings, standing beyond the demarcation line between two regions is accepted. In the case of airports, this needs to be beyond the airport area entirely, while for train transport, a minimal visit involves a reasonable distance beyond the train station itself.

However, in the spirit of real travel, NomadMania would consider that good visits should be the aim of travellers.

The verification system is our way of ensuring that travellers’ claims of their regions and countries visited are true. While we accept our members’ claims, experience has shown that certain people exaggerate their travels, either deliberately or through haste and error.

There are three levels of verification: UN countries, NM regions and Supreme verification.

In all cases, a random sample of countries/regions is given, and the traveller must prove a visit, ideally through visas/stamps, boarding passes, bills and, in certain cases, photographs. Given the wide variety of profiles, the process is adapted to the traveller in question.

Travellers who pass the verification get a badge next to their profile.

Read more about each level of verification here.

M@P is a novel list that will hopefully bring some new interest in the travel community and encourage travellers to go further – when this becomes possible again. The idea is that while our NomadMania 1301 Masterlist provides a solid division of the world’s countries, M@P serves as a much more fluid list with all sorts of significant oddities and out-of-the-way places that a travel could be striving for, including islands, exclaves, geographical anomalies and some major micronations too.

How is M@P conceptualised? We start with the esteemed MTP list, which for years has served as a basis for many in the travel community. We take away all regions that link directly to NomadMania regions and then look at those ‘additional’ regions – mainly obscure islands – that have become the talk of the travel community for years. Our reasoning is simple – if Salas y Gomez or Trinidade and Martim Vaz are worthy of a visit, then why not Miangas island? Never heard of Miangas? Now, with M@P, you have!

The list launches with 246 places, of which 123 are MTP places and the other 123 are our new contributions. For all regions where there are MTP places, we have duplicated that number with the same number of ‘new’ places; except for Polynesia and Antarctica, where the number of MTP places is already 18 and 17 places respectively. Conversely, there are 5 megaregions where there are no MTP places, and in these we launch with 7 places for each megaregion.

For those of you who have filled in your MTP regions with NomadMania correctly, your starting number of visited places in M@P will be those regions.

TBT (The Biggest Travellers) is a cumulative score of all criteria which we believe is a fair indication of the world’s biggest travellers. It is calculated as a percentage of the total score of the following:

NomadMania 1301: 25%
M@P: 20%
UN: 2%
UN+ : 1%
TCC: 1%
MTP: 1%
CHAD: 5%
KYE: 5%
Milestones: 10%
WHS: 10 %
Top of the Tops (Series): 10%
All Series Cumulative Score: 5%
Border Series: 1%
World Cities Series: 1%
World of Nature Series: 1%
Experiences Series: 1%
Indigenous Peoples Series: 1%

Travellers with less than 135 UN countries visited are not included in the TBT ranking.

To the total score above, we add the following:
a. one point is added to the travellers who have been verified for NomadMania regions;
b. one point is added to travellers who have at least 50 achievement badges;
c. one point is added to travellers who have a Top 30 entry in the statistics for overall regions visited or new regions visited in one of the previous two calendar years (for 2021, that is 2020 and 2019);
d. Three points are added to the travellers who have passed the rigorous TBT verification and have been awarded their TBT badge – this verification can include any of the lists that form part of the TBT. Note that this verification is by invitation only, and generally includes only those with the highest placings in the TBT ranking.

One issue which our lists have not covered is the dynamism of travel. Have you travelled recently or a long time ago? This is where we bring in the YES list, which stands for ‘Years Elapsed Since’.

The list considers countries only, not regions, and we take 196 countries (193 Un Countries and Palestine, Taiwan and Kosovo). If you have completed your year of visit to a country (which is best done through My Trips, where you create a specific trip with clear dates), your YES will be automatically calculated.

If you visited the country in the current calendar year, your score is 0. We give you a ‘gift’ of the previous calendar year too – your score is 0 for any country visited in the previous calendar yes. Then, say you visited Guyana in 2021, which is now 2 years back from 2023: your score is 2. If your last visit to Tonga was in 2003, and we are in 2023, your score is 20.

If you have never visited a country, the score is your age – it is the number of years elapsed since you last visited, in this case, never, which is your years on the planet. Calculate all 196 scores and you get the total YES score. The lower score is the ‘best’ in the sense that it shows you are actively visiting countries closer to the current time.

We won’t calculate YES scores for people under 20 years old as their scores would be rather low based on their young age. We are also not listing ‘scores’ above 4,000 for this measure.

For travellers who do not use ‘My Trips’, we currently don’t have precise information on the last year of travel to a country, so we use an algorithm as follows:

Aged 20: Age for non visited countries + 10% of age for each visited country
Aged 21: Age for non visited countries + 10.5% of age for each visited country
Aged 22: Age for non visited countries + 11% of age for each visited country
i.e. the percentage will be half of the age as the age goes up
…
Aged 80: Age for non visited countries + 40% of age for each visited country

We will work to as soon as possible create a list where you can clearly note your last year of visit to a country.