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This Caribbean trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the whole region, not just the beach brochure version. You will meet the largest island and the smallest nation, the volcano that buried a capital, the sea's deepest trench, the country founded by a slave revolt, and the tiny island that two European powers have shared since 1648. The questions run from easy (which island is home to Kingston and Blue Mountain coffee?) to genuinely hard (which 1968 single named an entire genre?), so it works for a pub quiz round, a classroom geography unit or a pre-cruise warm-up. Music, food, sport, politics and natural history all get a turn. Every answer was checked against a primary reference page and each question carries the sentence that supports it, so you can trust the answer key when someone at the table argues.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which is the largest country in the Caribbean by area?
Cuba
Cuba covers about 110,000 square kilometres, more than twice the area of any other Caribbean country; its capital and largest city is Havana.
Q 02What is the capital city of Jamaica?
Kingston
Kingston became the capital in 1872, taking over from Spanish Town; it was founded in 1692 as a refuge after an earthquake destroyed Port Royal across the harbour.
Q 03The island of Hispaniola is shared by Haiti and which other country?
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island. Hispaniola and Saint Martin are the only two Caribbean islands split between two sovereign states.
Q 04Which music genre originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s?
Reggae
Reggae grew out of ska and rocksteady in Jamaica around 1968, slowing the tempo and pushing the bass forward; Bob Marley and the Wailers carried it worldwide in the 1970s.
Q 05Rum is distilled from the juice or molasses of which plant?
Sugarcane
Sugarcane was first domesticated in New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia; most rum is made from its molasses, while French-Caribbean rhum agricole ferments fresh cane juice.
Q 06Where did Christopher Columbus first make landfall in the Americas in October 1492?
An island in the Bahamas
The islanders called it Guanahani; Columbus named it San Salvador. Its exact identity among the Bahamian islands is still debated.
Q 07Which country was the first in the Americas to abolish slavery and the only one founded by a slave revolt?
Haiti
Haiti declared independence on January 1, 1804, thirteen years after the 1791 uprising began, becoming the second republic in the Americas after the United States.
Q 08The steelpan is the national instrument of which country?
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago declared the steelpan its national instrument in 1992; the instrument was developed in Port of Spain's poorer districts in the 1930s and 1940s from discarded oil drums.
Q 09Which Caribbean country's flag shows a split-open nutmeg fruit?
Grenada
Grenada adopted the flag at independence on February 7, 1974; the nutmeg in the hoist reflects the 'Island of Spice' nickname earned by its nutmeg and mace exports.
Q 10Which island became a republic on 30 November 2021, replacing the monarchy with a ceremonial president?
Barbados
The then Prince Charles attended the swearing-in in Bridgetown. The same day the country made Rihanna a National Hero.
Q 11The deepest point of the Caribbean Sea, about 7,686 metres down, lies in which undersea feature?
Cayman Trough
The Cayman Trough runs between the Cayman Islands and Jamaica along the boundary of the North American and Caribbean plates; the deepest trench in the region lies outside the Caribbean Sea, in the Atlantic.
Q 12Trinidad is home to the world's largest natural deposit of which substance?
Asphalt
Asphalt from Pitch Lake, near La Brea in southwest Trinidad, has been dug commercially since the 19th century; Sir Walter Raleigh used it to caulk his ships in 1595.
Q 13Which island group's capital is Nassau, on New Providence?
The Bahamas
Q 21Saint Lucia was nicknamed the 'Helen of the West' because it changed hands so often between Britain and whom?
France
France and Britain swapped the island 14 times, so the nickname likens it to Helen of Troy, the woman fought over; it finally stayed British from the 1814 Treaty of Paris until independence.
Q 22Which Saint Lucian poet won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature?
Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott, born in Castries in 1930, won for work including the epic Omeros (1990), which reworks Homeric characters among Saint Lucian fishermen; V. S. Naipaul won in 2001.
Q 23Nelson's Dockyard, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2016, is on which island?
Antigua
The Bahamas, a chain of about 700 islands of which around 30 are inhabited, became independent from Britain on 10 July 1973; Nassau holds most of the population.
Q 14The West Indies cricket team won the first two Cricket World Cups, in 1975 and which other year?
1979
1979 brought a second title, Viv Richards making 138 in the final against England at Lord's; a third straight final followed in 1983, lost to India.
Q 15Pico Duarte, the Caribbean's highest peak, rises in which mountain range?
Cordillera Central
Cordillera Central, Hispaniola's mountainous spine, carries Pico Duarte to about 3,098 metres, the highest summit in the Caribbean islands.
Q 16Blue Mountain Peak, the highest point in Jamaica, stands at roughly what elevation?
2,256 m
2,256 m is the summit height, the highest point in Jamaica; the range gives its name to the Blue Mountain coffee grown on its slopes between about 900 and 1,700 metres.
Q 17The 1902 eruption of Mont Pelée destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre on which French island?
Martinique
Martinique lost its commercial centre when the eruption of 8 May 1902 killed nearly 30,000 people in Saint-Pierre in minutes; in 2023 Mont Pelée and the Pitons du Carbet became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q 18The Soufrière Hills volcano destroyed Plymouth, the capital of which British territory?
Montserrat
Montserrat lost Plymouth to pyroclastic flows in 1997 after the volcano awoke in 1995; two-thirds of the population left, and the island is nicknamed 'The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean' for its Irish heritage.
Q 19Boiling Lake, the world's second-largest hot spring, is on which island?
Dominica
Dominica, the 'Nature Island', holds nine volcanic centres and the Morne Trois Pitons park that surrounds Boiling Lake; the Sisserou parrot on its flag lives nowhere else.
Q 20Which is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere by both area and population?
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Kitts and Nevis covers 261 square kilometres, with about 48,000 people; the capital, Basseterre, sits on Saint Kitts, the larger of the two islands, which are separated by a 3 km strait.
Antigua's English Harbour shelters the Georgian naval yard, named for Horatio Nelson, who was stationed there from 1784 to 1787 enforcing the Navigation Acts against American traders.
Q 24What is the national dish of Jamaica?
Ackee and saltfish
Ackee and saltfish pairs the boiled yellow arils of the ackee fruit with salted cod; unripe ackee is poisonous, so only fruit that has opened naturally is cooked.
Q 25Curaçao's famous liqueur is flavoured with the dried peel of which local citrus fruit?
Laraha
Laraha is a bitter orange descended from Valencia oranges the Spanish planted in the 16th century; the fruit turned inedible in the island's dry climate, but its sun-dried peel is aromatic.
Q 26Willemstad is the capital of which Dutch Caribbean island?
Curaçao
Curaçao was seized by the Dutch West India Company in 1634, and Willemstad grew around Fort Amsterdam on the Schottegat inlet; its pastel waterfront became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.
Q 27Saint Martin has been split between French and Dutch control since a treaty signed in which year?
1648
1648 saw the Treaty of Concordia signed on a hilltop, dividing the island into a larger French north and a smaller but more populous Dutch south, the two sides sharing an open border ever since.
Q 28Philipsburg is the capital of which constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands?
Sint Maarten
Its Princess Juliana International Airport is famous for jets skimming Maho Beach on final approach.
Q 29Aruba became a separate constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in which year?
1986
1986 brought Aruba's status aparte, separating it from the Netherlands Antilles on 1 January; the island lies about 29 kilometres off Venezuela's Paraguaná peninsula.
Q 30The US lease on its Guantánamo Bay naval base dates from an agreement of which year?
1903
1903 was the year of the lease agreement under which the United States pays rent for the bay; the cheques, $4,085 a year since 1974, have gone uncashed by Havana apart from one in 1959.