McDonald's is one of the largest chains of fast-food restaurants in the world, with more than 40,000 outlets worldwide. The majority of McDonald's outlets are franchises.
The list of countries follows the company's own calculation and contains several non-sovereign territories. Today, there are over 13,000 McDonald's restaurants in the United States, over 7,700 in mainland China, and over 3,000 in Japan. Its home country and the two largest foreign markets make up more than half of McDonald's stores worldwide. In addition, there are also over 1,600 McDonald's restaurants in France, over 1,500 in Canada and the United Kingdom, almost 1,400 in Germany, over 1,200 in Brazil, over 1,000 in Australia, over 800 in the Philippines and Italy, and over 700 in India. McDonald's has also ceased operations in some countries it previously operated in.
The first McDonald's restaurant was opened in 1940 by Dick and Mac McDonald. However, on 15 April 1955, Ray Kroc launched the first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois, featuring a ten-item menu built around a 15-cent hamburger.
The company expanded outside the United States beginning in 1967, in Canada as well as the US territory of Puerto Rico. In the early 1970s, within a few short years, McDonald's expanded further overseas by opening stores in Japan, Australia, Western Europe (Netherlands, West Germany, France and Sweden) and Central America (Costa Rica, Panama and El Salvador). By this time, there were over 1,600 McDonald's restaurants.
McDonald's opened its first restaurant in South America in 1979 in Brazil as well as the first in Southeast Asia in Singapore (followed by the Philippines and Malaysia in the early 1980s). It later expanded into Eastern Europe and the communist world in 1988 (Yugoslavia and Hungary). In 1992 it opened its first restaurant in Morocco, becoming the first in Africa and the Arab World and meaning that McDonald's for the first time had operations in every inhabited continent of the world. Today, McDonald's has operated more than 40,000 restaurants worldwide.
The largest McDonald's store in the world is the World's Largest Entertainment McDonald's in Florida. The biggest temporary McDonald's restaurant in the world was opened during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, which was by area. The northernmost McDonald's restaurant in the world is located in Tromsø, Norway (previously held by Rovaniemi, Finland after the restaurant in Murmansk, Russia, was closed in 2022), and the southernmost in the world is located in Invercargill, New Zealand.
This is a list of sovereign states around the world where McDonald's previously operated restaurants in.