Regions of Slovakia

Slovakia is a country in Europe. Since 1949, it has been split into special areas called regions to help organize its government and services. Today, Slovakia has eight main regions. Each region is made up of smaller parts called districts. There are 79 districts in total. These regions match a system used by the EU for keeping track of areas across Europe, known as NUTS level 3. Each region contains many towns and villages, called municipalities. These are the smallest parts of the system.

List

Slovakia has eight regions called kraje. They were brought back in 1996.

Slovakia is also split into eight self-governing regions. These are called Higher Territorial Units. They have the same areas and borders as the kraje. The main difference is that self-governing regions have leaders chosen by the people, while the kraje have leaders chosen by the government.

Name

The word "Region" in Slovakia, called kraj in Slovak, is special. It is not the same as other ways people talk about areas, like in tourism or traditions. There are also bigger groups of these regions used for counting and studying by groups like Eurostat. These bigger groups are:

• Bratislava region (statistical) SK 01 – just the city of Bratislava
• Západné Slovensko SK 02 – includes Trnava, Trenčín and Nitra
• Stredné Slovensko SK 03 – includes Žilina and Banská Bystrica
• Východné Slovensko SK 04 – includes Prešov and Košice

History

Prior to 1949

Slovakia used to be split into counties, not regions. This was the case when Slovakia was part of places like Great Moravia, the Kingdom of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the WWII Slovak Republic.

24 December 1948/1 January 1949 – 30 June 1960

At this time, Slovakia had six regions. Each region was named after its main city. These were:

• Bratislavský kraj (Bratislava Region)
• Banskobystrický kraj (Banská Bystrica Region)
• Košický kraj (Košice Region)
• Nitriansky kraj (Nitra Region)
• Prešovský kraj (Prešov Region)
• Žilinský kraj (Žilina Region)

1 July 1960 – 19 December 1990

Later, Slovakia was split into three bigger regions, with Bratislava as its own special area. These regions stopped being used for a short time, but they came back later.

Traditional regions

Slovakia has special areas that do not follow old county borders.