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The country's most sparsely populated region: rainforest and rivers where the Yanomami, Ye'kuana and other indigenous peoples live. The economy rests on river transport, trade in Puerto Ayacucho, tourism and traditional livelihoods; there are almost no roads and the rivers are the main routes. The Casiquiare, a natural channel between the Orinoco and Amazon basins, flows through the state; Humboldt travelled it in 1800.

Oil and petrochemicals: production since the 1930s, Puerto La Cruz is an export port and oil-terminal centre, the José complex is one of the country's three petrochemical complexes (methanol is its main product), and the heavy crude of the Orinoco Belt lies to the south. Barcelona, the capital, has traded in cattle and coffee. The coast offers resort tourism and the turquoise bays of Mochima national park.

The cattle heart of the llanos: vast ranches worked by mounted llaneros since colonial times, and a meatpacking industry in San Fernando de Apure. The land is flat and drains poorly, the rivers flood widely every year for long periods, and in flood season beef is flown out. Crop farming is secondary here.

Maracay is a hub of industry and farming in central Venezuela: the surrounding land is intensively farmed (sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, cacao), and from the 1910s, under Juan Vicente Gómez, dairy, meat, textile and paper works were built here. On the coast lie Henri Pittier park (1937), the country's oldest national park, and the village of Chuao with its renowned cacao: there is no road, and you arrive by boat from Choroní or on foot.

Where the Andes foothills meet the llanos: long among the country's leading cattle areas; oil has been produced here since 1948 and travels about 320 km by pipeline to the refinery at Morón. The state's historic crop is tobacco, and maize, sesame, rice, sunflower and plantains are grown too. The land runs from flat plains to foothills in the north-west.

The country's heavy industry and mineral wealth: Ciudad Guayana (founded 1961) with the SIDOR steelworks, aluminium made on cheap electricity, the Cerro Bolívar iron-ore district, bauxite, El Callao gold and diamonds. The Guri dam stands on the Caroní, which carries about 90% of the country's hydropower potential. The landscape is tepuis, the Gran Sabana savannah and Angel Falls, 979 m high.

The country's industrial heart: around Valencia are vehicle assembly, metalworking, food processing, cement, textiles and footwear, and a petrochemical plant stands between Valencia and Puerto Cabello. Puerto Cabello is one of Venezuela's main commercial ports. A historic landmark is the battle of Carabobo on 24 June 1821, which sealed the country's independence.

A state of flat llanos: historically cattle country, with rice, sorghum, maize and tobacco grown alongside. The business centres are San Carlos and Tinaquillo, on the main highways. The climate swings sharply between downpours and drought: the savannah floods in the rainy season and burns dry in the dry season, and that shapes the farmers' year.

The Orinoco Delta is a labyrinth of channels and mangroves where boats replace roads. The Warao live here, for whom the moriche palm is a source of food, fibre and shelter. The economy: fishing, rice, maize, cassava, pineapples, cacao and bananas on reclaimed land, forestry, clay and oil. The capital Tucupita is linked to the rest of the country by a highway.

Caracas is the country's business and administrative centre: government, banks, the stock exchange, the head offices of the oil company PDVSA and of one of the country's largest private companies, Empresas Polar. The city lies in a valley between the Ávila mountain ridge and the sea. It was founded in 1567 and from 1777 was the capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela.

Oil refining: on the Paraguaná peninsula the Amuay and Cardón refineries operate, and a large part of Venezuela's oil is refined here and leaves by tanker. The mainland is dry, with goats, fishing and farming confined to river valleys. Coro was founded in 1527 and has been a UNESCO site since 1993; from 1528 to 1546 the colony was run by the German bankers, the Welsers. The Médanos dunes are nearby.

The granary of the central llanos: Calabozo is regarded as the country's main rice centre, maize and sorghum are sown, beef and dairy cattle kept, and oil of the Orinoco Belt lies in the south of the state. Irrigation, introduced on the Guárico river in the 1960s, turned a cattle land into a grain land. In Calabozo in 1800 Humboldt studied electric eels.

The main transport gateway of Caracas: the port of La Guaira, through which most imported consumer goods reach the capital and neighbouring states, and Maiquetía international airport. A narrow coastal strip is squeezed between the sea and the Ávila mountains. La Guaira has historically been the sea harbour of Caracas; until 2019 the state was called Vargas.

The business centre of the country's west: Barquisimeto combines commerce, light industry and farming. In the dry hills coffee, sugar cane, citrus, potatoes, tomatoes and peppers are grown and cattle raised; Lara traditionally supplies almost all of the country's sisal, plus wines and agave “cocuy” spirit. Every 14 January Barquisimeto holds the procession of the Divina Pastora, one of the largest religious processions on the continent.

High Andes: the state is one of the country's leading producers of potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, lettuce and celery, third in milk, and farms trout; Mérida is a university city and a centre of domestic tourism. Above the city rises the Sierra Nevada with Pico Bolívar (about 5,000 m), and the cable car climbs to Pico Espejo, 4,765 m. The Coromoto ice-cream parlour became famous for hundreds of flavours and once held a Guinness record.

The state next to Caracas is the capital's commuter and industrial belt: Los Teques, Guarenas, Guatire, Charallave. Yet along the Barlovento coast and in the Tuy valley cacao has traditionally been grown, coffee higher in the hills, sugar cane, citrus and bananas on the valley floor. Barlovento is a centre of Afro-Venezuelan culture; on Saint John's day, 24 June, the drums are everywhere.

Oil has been the state's main industry since 1928 (the Quiriquire field near Maturín); it flows by pipeline north to Caripito and Puerto La Cruz, and the Orinoco oil belt lies to the south. The second industry is cattle raising on the savannahs; coffee, cacao and tobacco are grown in the northern uplands. Near Caripe lies the Guácharo cave, the country's first national monument (1949), where Humboldt described the oilbird in 1799.

Margarita Island is the country's main resort, with duty-free trade; besides tourism there is fishing and the canning of tuna and sardines. The landscape is the islands of Margarita, Coche and Cubagua. Nueva Cádiz on Cubagua was a 16th-century pearl town, one of the first European towns on the continent, abandoned after the disaster of 1541.

The country's main granary: according to the US Department of Agriculture, Portuguesa produced 54% of Venezuela's maize in 2024; rice (irrigated fields can yield more than one crop a year), sesame, sorghum, cotton, sugar cane, tobacco and foothill coffee grow here too. The trade hub is Acarigua. Guanare is the religious capital: tradition says the Virgin of Coromoto appeared to indigenous people here in 1652, and she is now patron of Venezuela.

The main fishing state: Cumaná is a port and fish-canning centre with one of the country's largest tuna fleets; in the early 20th century the state landed about half the national catch. Avocados, coffee, sugar cane and cacao are grown, and rum and chocolate are made around Río Caribe. Cumaná is counted among the first European towns on the mainland (early 16th century) and is the birthplace of Marshal Sucre.

A frontier state on the Colombian border: cross-border trade, processing of potatoes, sugar, milk and cheese, and textiles. In farming the main commercial crops are coffee and sugar cane, with potatoes, tobacco, pineapples and cattle besides. The “Andean” dynasty came from here: from 1899 to 1945 the country was ruled by natives of Táchira, Castro, Gómez, López Contreras and Medina Angarita.

An agricultural state in the Andes: the trade centre is Valera; sugar cane, coffee, cacao, fruit and grain are traditionally grown, and flour mills operate (the area once supplied about a quarter of the country's wheat). In 1813 in Trujillo Bolívar signed the “Decree of War to the Death”; the village of Isnotú is the birthplace of Dr José Gregorio Hernández, canonized in 2025 as Venezuela's first saint.

An agricultural state on the way from the centre to the west: regarded as the country's main orange producer, while Yaritagua is called the “sweet city” for its sugar cane. Avocados, peppers, peanuts and oil palm are grown too, and distilleries and cardboard factories operate here. Above the valley rises Sorte mountain, a pilgrimage site for followers of the María Lionza cult.

The country's oil heart: the Lake Maracaibo basin holds some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere, production began in 1914, and in 1922 the Barroso II gusher made Venezuela an oil power. The second pillar is farming: milk and cheese, cattle, plantains, oil palm, fish. Over the mouth of the Catatumbo river lightning strikes on more than a hundred nights a year, a phenomenon recorded by Guinness.

Los Roques has been a national park since 1972, a coral archipelago of hundreds of islets and cays. The economy rests on tourism (small family-run posadas on Gran Roque, diving, kitesurfing, sport fishing) and the traditional lobster fishery. People live year-round almost only on Gran Roque, more than a thousand of them; there are no large hotels on the archipelago.

Venezuela's easternmost region: rainforest, the Essequibo and Cuyuní rivers and the foothills of the Pakaraima massif, covering about 160,000 square kilometres. The economic base here is gold mining, above all in the Cuyuní basin. A Venezuelan law of 2024 made this territory a state of the country, Guayana Esequiba.