Summer Olympics: average medals per capita 1896-2020

Although the United States lead the all-time Summer Olympics medal table, and the Soviet Union have the highest average medal tally per event, it is the Bahamas who has the highest medal count per capita. With 8 golds and 16 total Olympic medals, and a population of fewer than 290,000 people in 2020, The Bahamas have won roughly 56 medals per million people. Until the 2020 Games, Finland consistently had the highest number of medals per capita, due to its legacy in athletic and wrestling events in the mid-twentieth century, although smaller (particularly Caribbean) nations have climbed the table in recent years.

Olympic tradition and lower populations in the top ten

With 511 total medals, Hungary is the most successful nation to have never hosted the Summer Olympics. Unlike the Bahamas or Finland, Hungary's medal haul has been consistently high throughout Olympic history, and they are currently eighth in the overall medal table. Hungary has won a large proportion of its medals in fencing, swimming and canoeing events, and is top of the overall table in pentathlon and water polo events. When it comes to gold medals per capita, Hungary is in second place with just under 19 medals per one million inhabitants. In addition to Finland, other Nordic countries have performed well at the Olympics on a per capita basis, as their high rate of participation over time and relatively low populations means that four of the top ten spots on this list are taken by Scandinavian countries.

U.S., Soviet Union and China fall behind

As mentioned previously, countries who have won the most medals overall do not have always the highest per-capita totals. For example, China has the fourth-most gold medals of all time, but, as China has the highest population in the world, this translates to just 0.18 golds per million people. The U.S. has won a total of 3 golds and 8 total medals per million people, while the Soviet Union had won fewer than four medals per million people, based on its population in 1990.

Average number of medals won per capita at the Summer Olympics from 1896 to 2020 (per one million inhabitants)

Country/International Olympic Committee	Gold	Silver	Bronze
Bahamas	27.87	6.97	20.91
Hungary	18.74	15.94	18.22
Finland	18.23	15.34	21.48
Sweden	14.65	17.43	17.72
New Zealand	11.2	6.84	10.99
Norway	11.07	9.41	9.04
East Germany*	9.5	8.01	7.88
Jamaica	8.78	12.16	8.44
Denmark	8.29	13.47	13.64
Bulgaria	7.77	12.67	11.8
Estonia	7.54	6.78	12.81
Cuba	7.5	6.27	7.5
Australia	6.55	6.82	8.31
Switzerland	6.12	9.13	8.43
Netherlands	5.54	6.07	7.12
Romania	4.68	5.09	6.34
Great Britain	4.2	4.65	4.64
Slovenia	3.85	4.33	5.29
Belgium	3.71	4.66	5
Italy	3.57	3.11	3.52
Croatia	3.41	3.17	3.41
France	3.4	3.88	4.2
Greece	3.36	4.22	3.93
United States	3.21	2.53	2.23
Czechoslovakia*	3.14	3.14	2.88
Germany**	2.73	3.09	3.37
Georgia	2.51	3.01	4.51
Ireland	2.23	2.03	2.84
Lithuania	2.2	2.57	4.78
Austria	2.11	3.78	4.55
Poland	1.9	2.35	3.62
Canada	1.88	2.86	3.89
South Korea	1.87	1.77	1.95
Slovakia	1.83	2.56	1.47
Czechia	1.77	1.96	2.52
Soviet Union* **	1.51	1.23	1.12
Belarus	1.38	3.17	4.44
Japan	1.34	1.19	1.41
Yugoslavia*	1.21	1.33	1.33
Spain	1.03	1.54	1.01
Russia*****	1.01	0.86	1.05
West Germany*	0.89	1.06	1.28
Ukraine	0.8	0.82	1.55
Kazakhstan	0.8	1.12	1.86
Azerbaijan	0.69	1.38	2.76
Serbia	0.69	0.8	1.26
Kenya	0.65	0.78	0.67
North Korea	0.62	0.62	0.85
Portugal	0.49	0.88	1.37
Turkey	0.49	0.31	0.44
Argentina	0.46	0.58	0.66
South Africa	0.46	0.56	0.49
Tunisia	0.42	0.25	0.59
Uzbekistan	0.3	0.18	0.6
Chinese Taipei (Taiwan)	0.29	0.46	0.76
Iran	0.29	0.27	0.35
Ethiopia	0.2	0.1	0.2
Morocco	0.19	0.14	0.33
China	0.18	0.14	0.12
Brazil	0.17	0.2	0.33
Thailand	0.14	0.11	0.24
Algeria	0.11	0.09	0.18
Mexico	0.1	0.19	0.28
Colombia	0.1	0.26	0.29
Egypt	0.08	0.11	0.19
Indonesia	0.03	0.05	0.05
India	0.01	0.01	0.01

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Release date

August 2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

1896 to 2021

Supplementary notes

Data for countries with five or more gold medals only.

This data was collected using the official Olympic.org site, as well as a spreadsheet from the Guardian that includes data from 1896-2008 (available here), 2012 and 2016 data was compared with that from Encyclopaedia Britannica, and several news outlets were used to update the table when medals were reassigned (i.e. for doping offenses).

*The population data used in the calculations comes from United Nations estimates for the year 2020, apart from the following countries:
Soviet Union - 290.938 million (1990)
East Germany - 16.11 million (1990)
West Germany - 63.25 million (1990)
Yugoslavia - 23.23 million (1991)
Czechoslovakia - 15.6 million (1993)

**Includes medals from the Unified Team in the 1992 Olympics; made up of all athletes from former-Soviet countries, excluding the Baltic States. Does not include medals won by Russia or the Russian Empire.

***Includes medals from the united German teams of the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Olympics, but does not include medals from East Germany or West Germany, whose medals are included in separate entries.

****Does not include medals won by athletes representing the Russian Olympic Committee in 2020.