Since the Olympic Games were revived by Pierre de Coubertin in 1896, more than 7,000 gold medals and 21,000 total medals have been presented across every Games. These range from core events like swimming and athletics to fringe events like art, aeronautics, alpinism and breaking.
Using the incredible Olympedia – a must-visit site for any Olympic enthusiast – I have compared each country’s gold medal haul with their 2025 population.
For states that no longer exist – think the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia – an approximate population has been calculated.
Note that while Summer Olympics is not technically correct – it is the Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games – the term has been used at times to differentiate.
These are the top 10 countries on gold medals per capita:
10. Switzerland (SUI)
1 gold medal per 74,728 people
Switzerland is one of three nations to have competed at every modern Olympics, summer and winter. They did not send a team to Melbourne in 1956, boycotting the first Games in the southern hemisphere due to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary, but as they participated in the equestrian held in Stockholm earlier that year, they are considered to have participated in 1956.
Their gold medals are fairly evenly split with a slight edge to the Winter Olympics, a gap that will likely widen come Milano Cortina 2026.
9. Dominica (DMA)
1 gold medal per 65,871 people
Dominica only has one gold medal – and one overall medal! – to its name. That came in Paris 2024 when Thea LaFond claimed a famous victory in the women’s triple jump.
Given the Caribbean island has only ever had 20 athletes represent them, it’s quite some performance.
8. East Germany (GDR)
1 gold medal per 65,104 people
The East German medal haul came across just 11 Games between 1968 and 1988, making their 192 gold medals and 519 total medals even more remarkable.
It perhaps exists with an asterisk given the prevalence of state-sponsored doping. Still, their estimated 12.5 million population is the largest of any country on this list.
7. Bermuda (BER)
1 gold medal per 64,555 people
Flora Duffy’s triathlon gold in Tokyo in 2021 gave Bermuda its only gold medal to date. The country’s first medal came with Clarence Hill’s bronze in the men’s heavyweight division in boxing in Montreal 1976.
To date, Bermuda remains the world’s smallest country by population to have won a gold medal at the Summer Olympics.
6. Hungary (HUN)
1 gold medal per 50,696 people
Hungary has participated in every Olympics except for 1920 and 1984, winning gold medals at every Summer Olympics at which they have competed as well as two winter golds at the last two Games.
Hungary has won more Olympic medals than any other existing nation never to have hosted the Games.
5. The Bahamas (BAH)
1 gold medal per 50,379 people
The Bahamas has won more Olympic medals than any other country with a population under one million, with their current population numbering 403,033.
Their first gold medal came in 1964 when Durward Knowles and Cecil Cooke won the Star class in sailing, while every gold since has come in athletics – led by women like Pauline Davis-Thompson and Shaunae Miller-Uibo.
4. Sweden (SWE)
1 gold medal per 48,884 people
Remarkably, Sweden has earned medals at every Olympics – both summer and winter – since 1908. They have only missed gold twice at the Summer Olympics – Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008 – while they struck out on the winter side in Oslo 1952, Innsbruck 1976, Nagano 1998 and Salt Lake City 2002.
Given their recent success at the Winter Olympics, winning seven golds in Pyeongchang in 2018 and a winter record eight golds in Beijing 2022, they could easily improve in Milano Cortina.
3. Finland (FIN)
1 gold medal per 37,740 people
Finland was an early powerhouse of the summer Games, led by the world’s dominant athlete of the 1920s Paavo Nurmi. They finished second on the medal table in Paris 1924 and third in Amsterdam 1928. However, the last time they cracked the top 10 was when they hosted the Olympics in Helsinki in 1952.
Their Winter Olympics performance has been more consistent but has also tailed off recently, held up by their ice hockey teams and their cross country skiers.
2. Norway (NOR)
1 gold medal per 26,650 people
Norway is the best-performing country at the Winter Olympics and also consistently wins gold medals in its summer equivalent. Olympedia has Norway on 211 gold medals across both.
With a population of 5.6 million – estimated to be only 250 less than Finland – it means that Norway has one gold medal per 26,650 people.
They have three eight-time gold medallists, all at the Winter Olympics: cross country skiers Bjørn Dæhlie and Marit Bjørgen and biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen. They could potentially be joined or surpassed by Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who will aim for four gold medals at Milano Cortina 2026.
1. Liechtenstein (LIE)
1 gold medal per 20,064 people
The microstate of Liechtenstein, nestled high in the Alps, has only 40,128 residents as of 2025. With two gold medals and 10 medals in total, they have a better record than any other nation.
Perhaps even more remarkably, Liechtenstein’s overall medal tally means they have one medal for every 4,013 people.
Nine of their 10 medals have been won by two families: the Wenzels (Hanni Wenzel won both of Liechtenstein’s gold medals in alpine skiing at Lake Placid in 1980) and the Frommelts. Only Ursula Konzett, who won bronze in the women’s slalom at Sarajevo 1984, is not related to the two families.