The boundary of a country

Administrative boundaries are relations tagged boundary=administrative with an admin_level. Countries are level 2.

The query

[out:json][timeout:25];
rel["boundary"="administrative"]["admin_level"="2"]["ISO3166-1"="LI"];
out geom;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. No area is needed: the country is found directly by its tags.
2. out geom; returns the boundary ways; join the outer ones into a ring to draw the polygon.

Variations

• Big countries have very detailed boundaries. Use a smaller extract if you only need a rough outline.
• Just the tags (names, population, Wikidata): out tags;.

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.