Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free North Macedonia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
North Macedonia is a landlocked Balkan republic of 1.8 million people that spent 27 years arguing with Greece about its own name before the Prespa Agreement of 2018 settled it. It sits on the ancient lands of Paeonia, was a cradle of the Cyrillic script at Ohrid, and gave the world Mother Teresa. This quiz covers the geography (Skopje and the Vardar valley, Lake Ohrid's 288-metre depths, Mount Korab, the Šar Mountains, Bitola and Tetovo), the history from Philip II and Rome through Tsar Samuil, five Ottoman centuries, the Ilinden Uprising, the Balkan Wars, Yugoslavia and the peaceful secession of 1991, and the modern state: the 2001 conflict and Ohrid Agreement, the Vergina Sun flag row, NATO membership in 2020, Bulgaria's EU veto and the first female president in 2024. Culture and daily life follow: Macedonian and co-official Albanian, the Orthodox and Muslim communities, ajvar and Ohrid trout, RK Vardar's handball titles, Skopje 2014's statues, the 1963 earthquake and the Polish architect who rebuilt the city, and the eight-rayed sun of the flag. Easy questions ask which country blocked the name; hard ones want the Roman capital of Macedonia Salutaris and the year the Ohrid Literary School was founded. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on North Macedonia, Skopje, Lake Ohrid, Ohrid, the flag, the Prespa Agreement, Mother Teresa and ajvar, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly what fraction of North Macedonia's population lives in the capital?
A quarter
The country has just over 1.8 million people.
Q 02Which of these countries does NOT border North Macedonia?
Montenegro
Albania and Serbia complete the list of neighbours.
Q 03North Macedonia makes up roughly what portion of the wider geographical region of Macedonia?
The northern third
The rest lies mainly in the neighbours to the south and east.
Q 04Under which 2018 agreement did the country add 'North' to its name?
Prespa
It ended a 27-year dispute with the southern neighbour and took effect on 12 February 2019.
Q 05Which country's objections drove the long dispute over the name Macedonia?
Greece
Athens saw the name as a claim on its own northern province.
Q 06Besides the name change, what symbol did the 2018 agreement require the country to stop using publicly?
The Vergina Sun
The 16-rayed sun had been found at Aegae, burial ground of the ancient kings of Macedon.
Q 07What did the 2018 name referendum achieve?
90% approval but too low a turnout
A boycott kept turnout under the 50 percent required, so parliament decided.
Q 08North Macedonia became the 30th member of NATO in which year?
2020
The southern neighbour's ratification of the accession protocol had unblocked the path.
Q 09Which country blocked the start of North Macedonia's EU accession talks in November 2020?
Bulgaria
The row led the EU to decouple Albania's accession path in 2024.
Q 10North Macedonia celebrates Independence Day on which date?
8 September
It marks the 1991 referendum endorsing secession from Yugoslavia.
Q 11The Republic Day holiday on 2 August commemorates which 1903 uprising against the Ottomans?
Ilinden
Rebels briefly formed the Kruševo Republic before being crushed.
Q 12The country joined the United Nations in which year?
1993
Its peaceful secession from Yugoslavia had come two years earlier.
Q 13In classical antiquity, most of present-day North Macedonia corresponded to which ancient region?
Paeonia
Its capital moved from Bylazora to Stobi.
Q 14Which king of Macedon absorbed Pelagonia and the south of the Paeonian kingdom in 356 BC?
Q 21What was the province containing today's North Macedonia called in the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia?
Vardar Banovina
Use of the name Macedonia was banned under Serbianisation.
Q 22Which IMRO member assassinated King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934?
Vlado Chernozemski
IMRO fought a long insurgency against Serbian rule in the region.
Q 23The 2001 conflict with ethnic Albanian insurgents ended with a deal named after which town?
Ohrid
It devolved greater power and cultural recognition to the Albanian minority.
Philip II
Paeonian cavalry later rode with Alexander's army.
Q 15What was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia Salutaris?
Stobi
Its ruins lie near modern Gradsko.
Q 16The Ohrid Literary School, founded in 886, helped spread which script?
Cyrillic
Saint Clement of Ohrid founded it on the orders of Tsar Boris I.
Q 17Which tsar made Ohrid his capital before Basil II crushed his armies in 1014?
Samuil
Within four years the Byzantines controlled the whole Balkans again.
Q 18Skopje served as capital of which 14th-century emperor's realm?
Stefan Dušan of Serbia
The Ottomans then held the region for five centuries.
Q 19Ottoman rule over the region ended with which conflict?
The Balkan Wars of 1912-13
The territory then passed to Serbia.
Q 20How many Jews did the occupying Bulgarian authorities deport from Skopje and Bitola during World War II?
Over 7,000
The round-up was carried out under German pressure.
Q 24Albanians make up roughly what share of North Macedonia's population?
25%
Albanian has been co-official at state level since 2019.
Q 25What is the national and official language of North Macedonia?
Macedonian
It is a South Slavic language.
Q 26Which mountain on the Albanian border is the tallest in North Macedonia?
Mount Korab
It rises to 2,764 m in the Šar range.
Q 27Which river drains 80 percent of North Macedonia's territory?
The Vardar
Its central valley defines the country's geography.
Q 28Which three natural lakes lie on North Macedonia's southern borders?
Ohrid, Prespa and Dojran
They are bisected by the frontiers with the western and southern neighbours.
Q 29Lake Ohrid, one of the oldest lakes in the world, has a maximum depth of how much?
288 metres
It is the deepest lake in the Balkans and holds more than 200 endemic species.
Q 30North Macedonia's side of Lake Ohrid was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which year?
1979
The listing was extended to the town's cultural area in 1980.