World Religions

The world's religious landscape includes traditions followed by billions of people as well as smaller faith communities, indigenous traditions and a growing population of people who identify with no religion.

Explore the beliefs, history, population and geographic distribution of major religious traditions below. Dedicated tradition pages are published as each is researched and sourced; in the meantime, our country studies show how these faiths are distributed nation by nation.

The eight groupings below cover the traditions that account for almost all of the world's population — from the two largest, Christianity and Islam, through Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Sikhism, to folk and indigenous religions and the fast-growing religiously unaffiliated.