Cantons of Switzerland Cantons of Switzerland The 26 cantons of Switzerland (, , , ) are the member states of the Swiss Confederation. The nucleus of the Swiss Confederacy in the form of the first three confederate allies used to be referred to as the Waldstätte. Two further major steps in the development of the Swiss cantonal system are referred to by the terms "Acht Orte" ("Eight Cantons"; between 1353 and 1481) and "Dreizehn Orte" ("Thirteen Cantons",during 1513–1798); they were important intermediate periods of the Ancient Swiss Confederacy. Each canton, formerly also From 1833, there were 25 cantons, increasing to 26 after the
Cantons of Switzerland Swiss Federal Constitution of 1999 by being joined to their other "half" with the conjunction "and": In contrast, the first article of the 1848 and 1874 constitutions constituted the Confederation as the union of "twenty-two sovereign cantons", referring to the half-cantons as "Unterwalden ( [‘above and beneath the woods’])", "Basel ( [‘city and country’])" and "Appenzell ( [‘both Rhoden’])". The 1999 constitutional revision retained this distinction, on the request of the six cantonal governments, as a way to mark the historic association of the half-cantons to each other. While the older constitutions referred to these states as "half-cantons", a term