Every Landlocked Country in the World: The Complete List by Continent

Pull up a world map and colour in every country that never touches the sea. You will end up shading 44 countries — nearly one in five nations on Earth. Unlike a random scattering, these countries cluster tightly into a handful of regions, and once you see the pattern, the whole list becomes far easier to hold in your head. Here is every landlocked country on the planet, grouped by continent.

Europe — 15 landlocked countries

Europe holds the densest cluster of landlocked nations anywhere, many of them squeezed between larger neighbours in the continent's mountainous centre.

• Andorra (Andorra la Vella) — tucked in the Pyrenees between France and Spain
• Austria (Vienna) — a landlocked hub at the crossroads of Central Europe
• Belarus (Minsk) — Europe's largest landlocked country by population
• Czechia (Prague) — split from Slovakia in the 1993 Velvet Divorce
• Hungary (Budapest) — home to Lake Balaton, Central Europe's largest lake
• Kosovo (Pristina) — one of the world's newest and least recognised states
• Liechtenstein (Vaduz) — one of only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth
• Luxembourg (Luxembourg City) — the world's highest GDP per capita
• Moldova (Chisinau) — home to Europe's largest wine cellar network
• North Macedonia (Skopje) — birthplace of Mother Teresa
• San Marino (San Marino City) — the world's oldest surviving republic
• Serbia (Belgrade) — one of Europe's oldest continuously inhabited cities
• Slovakia (Bratislava) — the highest concentration of castles per capita on Earth
• Switzerland (Bern) — neutral since 1815, despite bordering five other countries
• Vatican City (Vatican City) — the world's smallest country by both area and population

Africa — 16 landlocked countries

Africa has the most landlocked countries of any continent — a legacy of colonial-era borders drawn with little regard for coastline access.

• Botswana (Gaborone) — home to the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage site
• Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou) — formerly known as Upper Volta
• Burundi (Gitega) — one of the world's most densely populated landlocked nations
• Central African Republic (Bangui) — contains one of Africa's last untouched rainforests
• Chad (N'Djamena) — Lake Chad has shrunk by over 90% since the 1960s
• Eswatini (Mbabane) — one of the world's last absolute monarchies
• Ethiopia (Addis Ababa) — Africa's most populous landlocked country, over 120 million people
• Lesotho (Maseru) — entirely surrounded by South Africa, the only country in the world with this feature
• Malawi (Lilongwe) — Lake Malawi holds more fish species than almost any other lake on Earth
• Mali (Bamako) — home to Timbuktu, once a centre of Islamic scholarship
• Niger (Niamey) — over 80% of the country lies within the Sahara Desert
• Rwanda (Kigali) — one of Africa's highest rates of women in parliament
• South Sudan (Juba) — the world's newest country, independent since 2011
• Uganda (Kampala) — home to the source of the White Nile
• Zambia (Lusaka) — Victoria Falls sits on its southern border
• Zimbabwe (Harare) — home to the ancient city of Great Zimbabwe

Asia — 12 landlocked countries

Asia's landlocked nations range from the world's largest by area to some of its highest-altitude capitals.

• Afghanistan (Kabul) — the Hindu Kush covers roughly three-quarters of its territory
• Armenia (Yerevan) — one of the world's oldest wine-producing regions
• Azerbaijan (Baku) — sits below sea level, on the shore of the landlocked Caspian Sea
• Bhutan (Thimphu) — famously measures national success by "Gross National Happiness"
• Kazakhstan (Astana) — the world's largest landlocked country, bigger than Western Europe
• Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek) — home to one of the world's largest alpine lakes, Issyk-Kul
• Laos (Vientiane) — the most bombed country per capita in history
• Mongolia (Ulaanbaatar) — the least densely populated country on Earth
• Nepal (Kathmandu) — home to eight of the world's ten highest mountains
• Tajikistan (Dushanbe) — over 90% of its territory is covered by mountains
• Turkmenistan (Ashgabat) — home to the Darvaza gas crater, burning continuously since the 1970s
• Uzbekistan (Tashkent) — the world's only doubly landlocked country outside Europe

South America — 2 landlocked countries

South America is almost entirely coastal, with just two exceptions.

• Bolivia (Sucre / La Paz) — maintains a navy on Lake Titicaca despite having no coastline
• Paraguay (Asuncion) — one of only two landlocked countries in South America, relying heavily on river access to the sea

Oceania and North America — zero landlocked countries

Every country in Oceania has direct ocean access, since the region is made up entirely of islands and island groups. North America's mainland nations all touch either the Atlantic, Pacific or Caribbean, leaving both continents with no landlocked members at all.

The two doubly landlocked countries, side by side

Only two nations on the entire list are landlocked by other landlocked countries — meaning a shipping container must cross at least two international borders before reaching open water:

• Liechtenstein, wedged between Switzerland and Austria
• Uzbekistan, whose five neighbours — Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — are all landlocked themselves

Quick reference by the numbers

• Total landlocked countries: 44
• Continent with the most: Africa (16)
• Continent with the fewest (excluding zero): South America (2)
• Doubly landlocked: 2 (Liechtenstein, Uzbekistan)
• Largest by area: Kazakhstan
• Most populous: Ethiopia
• Wealthiest per capita: Luxembourg

How to actually remember all 44

Trying to memorise this list in one sitting rarely works. Learn it the way the list above is structured — one continent at a time. Europe's cluster of small, wealthy nations is the easiest starting point; Africa's larger group benefits from splitting into West (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad), East (Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan) and Southern (Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini) sub-clusters; Asia's twelve fall naturally into a Central Asian belt (the five "-stans") plus a South Asian and Caucasus group.

Test yourself

Use the landlocked country picker on this page to spin through the full list at random. Each spin drops you on one of these 44 nations — try naming its capital and continent before the card reveals it, and you will have the entire list memorised faster than reading it top to bottom ever could.