The list of freshwater, estuarine and marine fishes known from the Orinoco river delta in Venezuela is updated, corrected and expanded. Based on recent field work, revision of the literature and museum collections, a list of 438 species was assembled that includes nine new records for the region. These are grouped in 20 orders, 82 families and 281 genera. The orders with the most species are Characiformes (132), Perciformes (99) and Siluriformes (87). Most of the fishes were found in freshwater (71 %) with estuarine and marine species amounting to only 39 %. About one third (29 % - 127 sp.) have economic importance as fishery resources. Four introduced species were found, three exotic and one transported from another Venezuelan drainage.