North Carolina is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. In the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388.