Finding the user’s supported cultures using the CultureInfo class in .NET C#

The CultureInfo class has a static method to retrieve the supported locales on the user’s machine:

CultureInfo[] supportedCultures = CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.AllCultures);

The GetCultures method accepts a CultureTypes enumeration:

• AllCultures: show all cultures regardless of the type
• FrameworkCultures: show all specific and neutral cultures that ship with .NET
• InstalledWin32Cultures: all cultures installed on Windows
• NeutralCultures: all language-specific, i.e. neutral cultures where the region which determines the specific culture is omitted
• ReplacementCultures: custom cultures created by the user that replace an existing culture
• SpecificCultures: the most precise culture type where both the language and regions are denoted
• UserCustomCulture: custom cultures
• WindowsOnlyCultures: deprecated, yields an array with 0 elements in .NET 4+

So in case you’d like to find all specific cultures and their names you can write as follows:

CultureInfo[] supportedCultures = CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.SpecificCultures);
List<CultureInfo> ordered = supportedCultures.OrderBy(c => c.Name).ToList();
foreach (CultureInfo ci in ordered)
{
	Console.WriteLine(string.Concat(ci.Name, ": ", ci.EnglishName));
}

However, if you’re only interested in the supported languages then the following will do:

CultureInfo[] supportedCultures = CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.NeutralCultures);
List<CultureInfo> ordered = supportedCultures.OrderBy(c => c.Name).ToList();
foreach (CultureInfo ci in ordered)
{
	Console.WriteLine(string.Concat(ci.Name, ": ", ci.EnglishName));
}

Read all posts related to Globalisation in .NET here.