Hungary Counties

Hungary is a basin: the Danube cuts it in two, the Great Plain fills the east, and a round there gives you few hills to go on. The county is the tier that turns a flat field or a town on the Tisza into a place, and it is what the number plates, the regional newspapers and the county seats are organised around.

The quiz: Name to place, on the map
Grouped by: Statistical region: the seven regions from Central Hungary to the Southern Great Plain
In the game: 20 counties

Start

What you are looking at

The 19 counties (megye) and the capital, which is a county of its own in every way that matters here. Budapest sits inside Pest County and is drawn as a hole in it: Pest is the county that wraps the capital, and its seat is Budapest all the same.

The map keeps the 2020 name of Csongrád-Csanád, which was Csongrád until then. Several names are doubled or tripled, because each county was made by joining historic ones: Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok are all three counties in one.

The groups are the seven statistical regions Hungary reports its figures under. The same regions group the districts in Hungary Districts.

How to place one

Split the country at the Danube. West of it is Transdanubia, the hilly half, with Győr-Moson-Sopron against the Austrian border and Baranya in the south. East of it is the Great Plain.
Find Lake Balaton. It runs between Veszprém and Zala to the north and west and Somogy to the south, and it is the one landmark in the west that no one confuses.
Use the northern hills. Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Heves and Nógrád are the ones along the Slovak border, and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg is the corner against Ukraine and Romania.
Leave the plain for last. Bács-Kiskun, Csongrád-Csanád and Békés in the south and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok in the middle share a river and a climate, and are easier from their neighbours than on their own.

Every county, by region

Central Hungary2 counties: Budapest, Pest
Northern Hungary3 counties: Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Heves, Nógrád
Western Transdanubia3 counties: Győr-Moson-Sopron, Vas, Zala
Southern Great Plain3 counties: Bács-Kiskun, Békés, Csongrád-Csanád
Northern Great Plain3 counties: Hajdú-Bihar, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg
Central Transdanubia3 counties: Fejér, Komárom-Esztergom, Veszprém
Southern Transdanubia3 counties: Baranya, Somogy, Tolna

Worked examples

Budapest

The smallest of them

Budapest is the capital and a county, about a quarter the size of the next smallest. It is drawn with a tap area wider than its shape, because on a map of the whole country it is a few pixels across. Zoom in for the edge.

Bács-Kiskun

The biggest of them

Bács-Kiskun is the largest county, in the south on the Danube, and it reaches from the Serbian border nearly to Budapest. Its seat is Kecskemét.

Komárom-Esztergom

The smallest outside the capital

Komárom-Esztergom is a thin county on the Danube, in the northwest, with the Slovak border across the river. It is the smallest of the 19, and Tatabánya is its seat.

Frequently asked questions

How many counties does Hungary have?

Nineteen, and the capital, which is a county of its own and is counted as the twentieth.

Why is Budapest a separate answer from Pest?

Budapest is its own unit of government, with its own assembly, though Pest County's offices are in it. The quiz asks for them separately because they are separate places on the map.

What is a statistical region?

A group of counties that Hungary reports statistics under, the NUTS 2 level. Learning the seven first narrows a round down to a corner of the country before the county has to be found.

The tier below this one is Hungary Districts. For another country at this level, see Austria States.

Sources

geoBoundaries, Hungary ADM2 and ADM1, the boundaries; the counties are the districts merged by the county their centre falls in
Counties of Hungary, the counties and their seats
Regions of Hungary, the seven statistical regions the counties are grouped into

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