How Many Dog Breeds Are There in the World?
(2024 Update)

Certain groups govern the registration of canine breeds. Generally, these groups are confined to individual countries. For instance, the AKC is the American Kennel Club1, and they’re a US-based governing body. Of course, they’re far from the only such governing body. Some other similar groups include Britain’s Kennel Club2 (KC), the Federation Cynologique International3 (FCI), and Europe’s Continental Kennel Club4 (CKC).

What’s interesting about these groups is that they each utilize entirely different protocols for breed determination. Because of this, they each recognize a different number of dog breeds. This makes it a bit difficult to determine how many breeds there truly are in the world since each of the regulating bodies that keep track of canine breeds disagrees about the number.

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For example, the AKC only recognizes 195 breeds, while the FCI recognizes 360 breeds officially. Then, there are all the experimental breeds. So there isn’t an exact, worldwide, internationally agreed-upon number, but it would be safe to say there are anywhere between 195 and 500 dog breeds in the world.