How Many Greek Islands Are There?

There is no single count, because the sources do not agree on what counts as an island. The Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO), which runs visitgreece.gr, says Greece “includes 6,000 islands and islets scattered across the Greek seas, of which only 227 islands are inhabited”. Its page gives no year, no source, no minimum size and no definition of “inhabited”. The most careful count of inhabited islands comes from the 2011 census, and it arrives at 114.

The counts and where they come from

The spread in the totals comes from the size cut-off. Set a minimum size and the count falls toward 1,200; count every islet and it climbs toward 6,000. None of these sources states a threshold you could check, so any single total is a convention, not a measurement.

The inhabited count is firmer. Working from the 2011 census, the University of the Aegean’s atlas finds 114 islands with residents. Eighty of them have their own municipality or local community, and 34 appear only as settlements inside another unit. Together they cover 24,772.71 km², or 18.7% of Greece, and had 1,632,955 residents, 15.1% of the population. Another 440 islets are recorded as settlements with nobody living in them. We found no count based on the 2021 census. Condé Nast Traveler’s island guide, updated in March 2026, repeats GNTO’s 227.

The eight island groups

GNTO sorts the islands under eight headings. Administration does not always follow them, which matters when you read a regional notice or a ferry timetable.

• Argo-Saronic (GNTO writes Argosaronic): Salamina, Aegina, Agistri, Poros, Hydra and Spetses, “spanning the Saronic Gulf to the entrance of the Argolic Gulf”. Salamina’s short ferry from Perama carries about 8 million of the 20 million passengers a year who use the Port of Piraeus.
• Crete has a heading of its own. It is the largest Greek island.
• Cyclades: GNTO lists Santorini, Mykonos, Milos, Paros, Naxos, Ios, Sifnos, Folegandros and Amorgos, then Delos, Andros, Tinos, Syros, Kea, Kythnos, Serifos, Kimolos, Antiparos, Anafi, Sikinos, Thirasia and the Small Cyclades (Iraklia, Schinoussa, Donousa and Koufonisia). The group takes its name, GNTO says, from the circle it forms around Delos.
• Dodecanese: the name promises twelve islands, but GNTO lists 14 main ones (Rhodes, Kos, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Astypalea, Patmos, Leros, Tilos, Lipsi, Kasos, Symi, Nisyros, Chalki and Kastellorizo) plus smaller ones such as Telendos and Pserimos.
• Evia also stands alone. GNTO calls it the second-largest island of Greece, and two bridges at Chalkida tie it to the mainland.
• Ionian Islands: Corfu, Kefalonia, Ithaca, Zakynthos and Lefkada, with Paxi, Antipaxi, Meganisi, Kythira, Antikythira and the Diapontia islands. Kythira is Ionian by tradition but administered from Attica, together with the Argo-Saronic islands. The main Ionian islands are not served from Piraeus, Rafina or Lavrio; their ferries leave from Kyllini, Patras, Astakos and Igoumenitsa on the west side of the mainland.
• North Aegean: Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Thassos, with Limnos, Ikaria, Fournoi, Psara, Oinousses, Agios Efstratios and Samothrace. Thassos and Samothrace belong administratively to the Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace.
• Sporades: Skiathos, Skopelos, Alonnisos and Skyros. The first three are run from Thessaly, through its regional unit of Magnesia and Sporades.

What are the five largest Greek islands?

GNTO’s own island pages give the order: Crete is the largest, Evia second, Lesvos third, Rhodes fourth and Chios fifth. Crete alone covers about 8,336 km² and runs about 260 km from east to west. Two of the five have pages here, Crete and Rhodes.

Which is the nicest Greek island to go to?

No official body ranks them, and the guides agree on very little. Across GNTO, Lonely Planet, both Condé Nast titles and Rick Steves, only two calls are unanimous: Santorini for couples and Mykonos for nightlife. Crete is the family pick of both Condé Nast editions. Beyond that it depends on the trip you want, which is what the island chooser on our homepage sorts out. Couples have their own honeymoon guide.

What island was Mamma Mia filmed on?

Skopelos, in the Sporades. GNTO says film producers “chose to shoot scenes from Mamma Mia! here, making the island famous around the world”, and calls Skopelos the largest of the Northern Sporades, between Skiathos and Alonnisos. It has no airport. Flights land on neighbouring Skiathos, which handled 639,242 passengers in 2025, and boats link the two; SeaJets also sails from Volos on the mainland on a Volos, Skiathos, Skopelos and Alonnisos line. skopelosislandtour.com covers Skopelos’s boat days from Skiathos, the clifftop chapel of Agios Ioannis Kastri and Kastani beach.

Islands with airports, and islands without

In 2025, 28 airports on 26 islands had commercial flights. The big international gateways are Heraklion on Crete, where 4.05 million passengers got off international flights, Rhodes with 3.06 million and Corfu with 2.08 million. Paros, Naxos, Milos, Chios and Syros had next to no international flights, so you reach them through Athens or by sea.

Many islands have no airport at all: Ios, Folegandros, Amorgos, Symi, Patmos, Ithaca and Hydra among them. Lefkada is reached from Aktion airport on the mainland, over a floating bridge, and Thassos from Kavala by ferry. The islands map shows where the airports and ports are, and island hopping covers the ferries between them.

A list of Greek islands by group

These are 37 of the islands people ask about most, with GNTO’s group, the island’s airport code where it has one, and one fact each. Islands with a page on this site link to it.

Sources: GNTO (visitgreece.gr island and group pages), the University of the Aegean’s Atlas of the Islands, Lonely Planet, Condé Nast Traveller (UK), Condé Nast Traveler (US), Rick Steves, HCAA and Fraport Greece airport statistics, ELIME cruise figures, the Port of Piraeus, the Environment Ministry’s emergency decisions and the ferry operators’ own pages. Checked October 2026.