A micronation is a small organisation claiming to be an independent nation while not being recognized as such by goverments of UN members of major international organizations.
Micronations are also distinct from imaginary countries and from other kinds of social groups (such as eco-villages, campuses, tribes, clans, sects, and residential community associations) by expressing a formal and persistent, even if unrecognized, claim of sovereignty over some physical territory. Occasionally one can find a micronation for sale.
The earliest known micronations date from the beginning of the 19th century. The advent of the Internet provided the means for people to create many new micronations, whose members are scattered all over the world and interact mostly by electronic means using micronation websites, often calling their nations “nomadic countries”. Many are competing to become the largest micronation.
The term “micronation” to describe those entities dates at least to the 1970s. The term micropatriology is sometimes used to describe the study of both micronations and microstates by micronationalists, some of whom refer to sovereign nation-states as “macronations”. In 2020 there are so many that a list of micronations is needed to discover them all.