The World Factbook is the name of a now (at least publicly) discontinued project by the United States government, running from 1962 until 2026 - the book, later website, gives an overview of every country and territory1, often giving a short history of the location, what the major religions are, the ethnicities of those who live there and breaking down other information from what currency is used to whatever the top level domain name is.
The project was spearheaded by the CIA for government members, so a lot of the information can be rather dull to read, but still, it can be an interesting look into how the USA views parts of the world.
In 2026, the project was axed, with the CIA announcing that the project had «sunset»2:
Over many decades, The World Factbook evolved from a classified to unclassified, hardcopy to electronic product that added new categories, and even new global entities. The original classified publication, titled The National Basic Intelligence Factbook, launched in 1962. The first unclassified companion version was issued in 1971. A decade later it was renamed The World Factbook. In 1997, The World Factbook went digital and debuted to a worldwide audience on [CIA.gov](https://cia.gov], where it garnered millions of views each year.
This announcement was a suprise to many as no warning was given and the announcement had no explanation as to why the project would end.
Despite this, thanks to the work being made by the CIA, it is automatically in the public domain, so a number of mirrors and continuation projects have been made over years, such as with CIA World Factbook Archive and OpenFactBook.
This page was last edited on 2026-09-19 18:50:09.
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