The Lesser Antilles are part of the Antilles, which together with the Greater Antilles form the West Indies. They are a long chain of islands, wrapped around the eastern end of the Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. The Lesser Antilles are (generally from north to south): the U.S. Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla (Br.), Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat (Br.), Guadeloupe (Fr.), Dominica, Martinique (Fr.), Saint Lucia, Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, the islands off the coast of Venezuela, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba (Neth.).

The islands of Bonaire and Curaçao, Sint Eustatius, Saba and the southern part of Saint Martin, form the Netherlands Antilles, with the first two located off the Venezuelan coast and the latter three located in the northeastern corner of the Caribbean.

The Lesser Antilles can be divided into the Windward in the south and the Leeward Islands in the north. However, the Netherlands Antilles are divided into the groups in the northeast and the southwest, with different naming conventions, see Netherlands Antilles.