text: how many islands are there in the world?   there are over 100,000 islands on earth.  out of the 5 major oceans, the pacific has about 25,000 to 30,000 islands. if you take 150 of the largest islands and add their land mass together, they would equal the size of europe. also, one in every ten people on earth lives on an island, which equals to over 600 million people living on islands.