The 44 landlocked countries of the world

Forty-four countries have no coastline at all. The largest is Kazakhstan — ninth in the world by area, yet its only sea is the Caspian, which despite the name is a lake. The most populous is Ethiopia, with well over a hundred million people and not a metre of shore.

Two of them are doubly landlocked — every country they border is landlocked too, so reaching the ocean means crossing at least two frontiers. There is one in Europe, Liechtenstein, and one in Asia, Uzbekistan, and nowhere else on Earth.

Africa has more landlocked countries than any other continent, sixteen of them, and the list explains a surprising amount of economic geography: with no port of your own, every import and export moves at a neighbour's pleasure. Bolivia lost its coast to Chile in 1884 and has kept a navy ever since — training on Lake Titicaca, waiting.

Kosovo is landlocked too, but as a partially recognised state it is left out of the count here, matching how the figure of 44 is usually quoted.

See all 44 on the map →

Derived from the mledoze/countries dataset's landlocked flag, so the list maintains itself. Population from Natural Earth, carrying the year of each estimate; area from the same mledoze dataset.