How to find collation of a sql server instance

Say, you want to find the collation of your sql server instance. You could do it in two ways:

Through SSMS

In SSMS, connect to the server instance that you want to find the collation for.

Right click on the server instance node and select Properties.

It should open a “Server Properties” dialog.

On the General Page, you can see the Server Collation.

By using a Query

You can query for the collation as follows:

Connect to the sql server instance and open a new Query windows.

Issue the following select statement:

select SERVERPROPERTY('collation')

This query can be executed from any database context on the server not necessarily only the master database.