Buddhism Around the World: A Country Guide

By Tim Yu · Updated 2026-06-04

Buddhism is practised by about 324 million people — just over 4% of humanity — and almost all of them, 98%, live in Asia, according to the Pew Research Center. Its three great traditions map loosely onto regions: Theravada across South and Southeast Asia, Mahayana across East Asia, and Vajrayana across the Himalayas and Mongolia.

The short answer

Where is Buddhism practised? Overwhelmingly across Asia, in three broad bands. The oldest tradition, Theravada, holds the south — Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. The largest family, Mahayana, dominates East Asia — China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, in forms such as Chan/Zen and Pure Land. The Himalayan tradition, Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism, runs along the high country — Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal, and the Himalayan reaches of India. Buddhists form a clear majority in seven nations and a meaningful minority in many more, and over the last century the tradition has put down roots in the West as well.

This page is a map and a hub. For how these traditions relate as a family, see the branches of Buddhism; the country sections below link out to fuller guides. (Unfamiliar terms are in the glossary.)

How many Buddhists are there?

The most careful recent count comes from the Pew Research Center, whose 2025 report estimates 324 million Buddhists in 2020 — “just over 4%” of the global population. That number was actually down from an estimated 343 million (about 4.9%) in 2010. Pew notes that Buddhists were “the world’s only major religious group” to shrink over that decade, for two demographic reasons: Buddhist populations are relatively old and have few children, and many people raised Buddhist no longer identify that way as adults — a pattern Pew calls “religious switching.”

It is worth holding that figure honestly. A shrinking headcount is a demographic fact about birth rates and self-identification; it says nothing about the depth, vitality, or reach of the teaching itself, which — through mindfulness and meditation — now touches far more lives than any census of formal Buddhists would capture.

The three vehicles, by region

A useful first map of the Buddhist world is the three “vehicles” (yana), which, as Encyclopaedia Britannica’s survey of the major systems lays out, took shape in different eras and spread in different directions. They are families of tradition rather than rival religions, and they overlap at the edges — but each has a heartland.

Theravada: South and Southeast Asia

Theravada — “the Teaching of the Elders,” the most conservative tradition and the keeper of the Pali Canon — is the established form of Buddhism across mainland Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. Its lands are:

• Sri Lanka, where the Pali tradition was preserved for over two thousand years and where roughly 70% of people are Buddhist.
• Thailand, by Pew’s count the country with the largest Buddhist population on earth — about 68 million people, some 94% of the nation. See Buddhism in Thailand.
• Myanmar (Burma), about 89% Buddhist.
• Cambodia, the most heavily Buddhist country in the world at roughly 97%.
• Laos, about 64% Buddhist.

This is the “Southern” transmission of Buddhism, woven deep into the calendar, temple life, and daily ethics of these nations.

Mahayana: East Asia

Mahayana (“the Great Vehicle”) is the largest and most varied branch, spread across East Asia in many forms — Chan and its Japanese descendant Zen, Pure Land, Tiantai, Nichiren, and more. Its world includes:

• China, home to the second-largest Buddhist population by Pew’s count (about 53 million) — though, as we’ll see, China is uniquely hard to measure. See Buddhism in China.
• Japan, where Zen and Pure Land schools shaped centuries of culture. See Buddhism in Japan.
• Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, each with rich Mahayana traditions of their own.

This “Northern” and “Eastern” transmission carried Buddhism along the Silk Road and across the sea, blending with Confucian and Daoist culture as it went — the long story told in how Buddhism spread.

Vajrayana: the Himalayas and Mongolia

Vajrayana — the “Diamond Vehicle,” better known in the West as Tibetan Buddhism — is a development within Mahayana that adds tantric ritual, mantra, and visualization. Britannica’s survey places it across the high country:

• Tibet and the Himalayan regions of India, its historic centre. See Buddhism in Tibet.
• Bhutan, about 75% Buddhist and the one country where Vajrayana is the state-supported tradition of a Buddhist majority.
• Mongolia, roughly 51% Buddhist, where Tibetan Buddhism took root centuries ago.
• Nepal, the Buddha’s birthplace, where Vajrayana and Newar Buddhist traditions endure alongside a Hindu majority.

Buddhist-majority countries

Pew’s 2025 analysis finds that Buddhists form a majority in seven countries. Ranked by share of population:

Five of the seven are Theravada lands of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka; the other two, Bhutan and Mongolia, follow the Vajrayana tradition of the Himalayas. Beyond these majorities, Buddhism is a large and influential minority across East Asia and a significant presence in countries from Singapore and Malaysia to Nepal.

It’s also worth a non-sectarian caveat: these national percentages can flatten real diversity. Most Buddhist countries are home to other faiths too, and several have seen periods of communal tension — so a single number per country is a starting point, not the whole picture.

The puzzle of counting China

China deserves its own note, because it shows how slippery “how many Buddhists” really is. Pew records about 53 million self-identified Buddhists in China — only around 4% of the population. Yet a 2018 survey it cites found that roughly a third of Chinese adults said they believe in the Buddha. Why the gap?

Because in China, as Pew explains, Buddhism’s boundaries are “blurry”: it is “deeply embedded with local folk religions,” and many people light incense at a Buddhist temple, honour the Buddha, and observe festivals without ever calling themselves “a Buddhist” as an exclusive identity. Western-style survey questions that ask for a single religious label miss this. So China is second in formally identified Buddhists, but by the measure of belief and practice it may well be home to the most people influenced by Buddhism of any country on earth. The honest answer is that both statements are true, depending on what you count.

The concentration of the Buddhist world

One striking feature of this map is how concentrated it is. Pew reports that 98% of all Buddhists live in the Asia-Pacific region, and that the ten countries with the largest Buddhist populations together account for 91% — about 296 million people. The remaining 2% live mostly in North America (2%) and Europe (1%).

That concentration is the legacy of how the tradition travelled: outward from northern India along two great routes — south to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, north and east through Central Asia to China, Korea, and Japan, and up into the Himalayas — a journey traced in how Buddhism spread.

Buddhism in the West

The newest chapter is the spread beyond Asia. Over the last century — and especially since the mid-twentieth — all three vehicles have established themselves in Europe, North America, and Australasia: Zen and Tibetan centres, Theravada forest monasteries, Pure Land temples serving Asian diaspora communities, and a vast secular mindfulness movement that grew from Buddhist meditation. Pew’s data place the rest of the Buddhist world outside Asia at roughly 2% in North America and 1% in Europe — so Western Buddhists remain a small fraction of the global total. Yet their influence on how the wider world encounters the Dharma is far larger than the numbers suggest, since it is largely through Western teachers, books, retreat centres, and apps that non-Asian audiences first meet Buddhist ideas. We tell that story in Buddhism in the West.

A final point of fairness: a “country guide” inevitably simplifies. Many of these nations have several living schools at once, sizeable non-Buddhist populations, and their own internal debates and reform movements; scholars also differ on exactly how to count adherents where identity is fluid. Treat the regional map below as an orientation, not a set of rigid borders.

The whole map at a glance

Step back and the pattern is clear. Buddhism is a single river that long ago split into three great streams, each settling into its own region of Asia: the conservative Theravada of the south, the expansive Mahayana of the east, and the esoteric Vajrayana of the high north — now joined by a young and growing presence in the West. They differ in scripture, ritual, and emphasis, and those differences are real and worth respecting. But beneath them runs the same trunk: the same Buddha, the same Four Noble Truths, the same path to the end of suffering. To see how the three relate as one family, continue to our guide to the branches of Buddhism.