The coldest city in the world is Yakutsk in Siberia, Russia, with a yearly average temperature of −8.8 °C and a January average of −38.6 °C; second is Anadyr in Russia’s Far East at −6.9 °C, and third is Yellowknife in Canada at −4.0 °C. Those figures come from Wikipedia’s List of cities by average temperature as it stands in 2026, which compiles monthly and yearly averages of daily highs and lows from cited climate records. Here a city means a settlement of at least 10,000 people, which leaves out a handful of colder Arctic stations and villages, covered at the end. Seven of the ten coldest cities are in Asia or North America, three are northern ports in European Russia and Greenland, and none is in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Ten Coldest Cities by Yearly Average Temperature
The table ranks cities by their mean temperature across all twelve months, the measure Wikipedia uses to call Ulaanbaatar the coldest capital. January averages are shown alongside, because a city with a mild winter but a cold summer, such as Nuuk, can rank above one with far harsher winters.
| Rank | City | Country | Yearly average | January average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yakutsk | Russia | −8.8 °C | −38.6 °C |
| 2 | Anadyr | Russia | −6.9 °C | −22.6 °C |
| 3 | Yellowknife | Canada | −4.0 °C | −25.5 °C |
| 4 | Fairbanks | United States | −2.1 °C | −22.4 °C |
| 5 | Nuuk | Greenland (Denmark) | −1.4 °C | −7.4 °C |
| 6 | Ulaanbaatar | Mongolia | −0.4 °C | −21.6 °C |
| 7 | Whitehorse | Canada | 0.2 °C | −15.0 °C |
| 8 | Murmansk | Russia | 0.6 °C | −10.1 °C |
| 9 | Arkhangelsk | Russia | 1.3 °C | −12.7 °C |
| 10 | Irkutsk | Russia | 1.4 °C | −17.6 °C |
Asia’s Leader: Yakutsk on the Lena River
Yakutsk, capital of the Sakha Republic, is a port on the Lena River about 450 km south of the Arctic Circle, with 355,443 people at the 2021 census. Its cold comes from distance as well as latitude. Nearly 1,000 km of land separates it from the Pacific, and in winter the dry, stagnant air of the Siberian High settles over the Central Yakutian Lowland. From 10 November to 14 March, no reading in the city’s records has ever topped 0 °C. The record low is −64.4 °C, set on 5 February 1891, and January 1900 averaged −51.4 °C. Exact averages depend on the period measured: Yakutsk’s own Wikipedia article gives −8.0 °C for the year and −36.9 °C for January from a different set of normals, but by either count it is the coldest city of more than 200,000 people and the largest city anywhere whose winter averages below −30 °C.
Summers swing the other way. July averages about 19.5 °C in the list, and the city reached 38.4 °C on 17 July 2011. The gap between the region’s extremes, about 102 °C, is the greatest seasonal temperature range in the world. No bigger city stands on continuous permafrost, which is why many of its buildings are raised on concrete piles. Mining of diamonds, gold and coal has made it one of Russia’s fastest-growing regional cities despite the climate.
Anadyr, Ulaanbaatar and Irkutsk: The Rest of Asia’s Top 10
Anadyr, second overall, is the administrative centre of Chukotka and Russia’s easternmost town, a port of about 13,000 people at the mouth of the Anadyr River in the far north-east of Asia. Founded in 1889 as Novo-Mariinsk and given town status in 1965, it is less extreme in January than Yakutsk at −22.6 °C, but it ranks second because its summers are short and cool, with July averaging just 11.6 °C.
Ulaanbaatar, sixth, is the coldest national capital in the world by yearly average, at −0.4 °C. The city of 1.79 million sits about 1,300 m above sea level in the valley of the Tuul River in north-central Mongolia, so altitude adds to its continental cold, and January averages −21.6 °C. Air pollution is a serious winter problem: heavy coal use makes it one of the world’s most polluted cities, and the fast-growing ger districts on its edges add to the smog.
Irkutsk, tenth at 1.4 °C, lies on the Angara River near Lake Baikal, about 520 km north of Ulaanbaatar, and had 587,891 people in 2010, making it the second-largest city in the top ten after Ulaanbaatar. Outside Russia and Mongolia, Asia’s coldest entries in the list are Astana in Kazakhstan, at 3.5 °C for the year and −14.2 °C in January, and Harbin, China’s coldest listed city, at 5.0 °C and −17.6 °C.
North America’s Leader: Yellowknife on Great Slave Lake
Yellowknife, capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, averages −4.0 °C over the year and −25.5 °C in January, colder in winter than any other city in the top ten except Yakutsk. It stands on the North Arm of Great Slave Lake and had 20,340 people in the 2021 census. In 2014 Environment Canada ranked it as having the coldest winter and the longest snow-cover season of any Canadian city. Its lowest recorded temperature is −51.2 °C, on 31 January 1947. The trade-off is light: Yellowknife has the sunniest summer in Canada, averaging 1,034 hours of sunshine from June to August.
Fairbanks, Nuuk and Whitehorse: Alaska, Greenland and the Yukon
Fairbanks, fourth at −2.1 °C, is the coldest city in the United States among those with at least 10,000 people. Founded as a trading post on the Chena River in 1901, it had 32,515 residents in 2020 and lies about 315 km by road south of the Arctic Circle. Its record low is −54 °C (−66 °F), on 14 January 1934. Our Siberia vs Alaska comparison looks at why interior Alaska and interior Siberia share such similar climates.
Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, with 20,113 people in January 2025, is the odd one out. Its January average of −7.4 °C is milder than Irkutsk’s, but its summers are cold, with July averaging only 6.5 °C, which pulls its yearly mean down to −1.4 °C. The sea keeps its winters milder than those of inland tundra at the same latitude. Whitehorse, capital of Yukon, comes seventh at 0.2 °C; its 28,201 residents in 2021 made up about 70% of the territory’s population. Further south, the coldest large cities on the Canadian prairies are Saskatoon (2.4 °C) and Winnipeg (2.9 °C), both with January averages below −15 °C.
Europe’s Leader: Murmansk, Then Arkhangelsk on the White Sea
Europe’s two entries are both ports on Russia’s northern coast, and both are warmer than the Asian and North American leaders. Murmansk, eighth at 0.6 °C, is the largest city in the world north of the Arctic Circle, with 270,384 people in 2021, spread along Kola Bay. The warm North Atlantic Current keeps its port free of ice, so January averages only −10.1 °C, far milder than inland Siberia. Arkhangelsk, ninth at 1.3 °C, lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina near its mouth into the White Sea; its January (−12.7 °C) is colder than Murmansk’s, even though its year as a whole is slightly warmer. Outside Russia, the coldest European city in the list is Oulu in Finland, at 2.7 °C.
South America, Oceania and Africa: No Month Below Freezing
No city in the Southern Hemisphere comes close to the top ten. The southern continents have little land at high latitudes apart from Antarctica, so their coldest listed cities sit on the coasts of far southern Patagonia, and none of the southern entries has a month that averages below 0 °C. The coldest South American entry is Stanley in the Falkland Islands (a British Overseas Territory also claimed by Argentina), at 5.6 °C, but with 2,974 people in 2021 it is a town by this article’s definition. The coldest cities are Ushuaia in Argentina, at 6.0 °C, and Punta Arenas in Chile, with 132,363 people in 2024, at 6.1 °C. Ushuaia, on the Beagle Channel below the 54th parallel, claims the title of the world’s southernmost city; its coldest month, July, averages 2.3 °C.
La Paz in Bolivia, at 8.8 °C, is cold because of altitude rather than latitude and barely changes through the year. In Oceania the coldest city in the list is Dunedin in New Zealand, at 11.1 °C. Africa’s is Johannesburg, at 15.5 °C, with a June average of 9.6 °C on the Highveld; Asmara in Eritrea is only a tenth of a degree warmer.
Colder Than Any City: Alert, Oymyakon and Verkhoyansk
The list contains several places colder than Yakutsk that are too small to count as cities. Alert in Nunavut, on Ellesmere Island 817 km from the North Pole, is the northernmost continuously inhabited place in the world and averages −16.7 °C, but it is a military and weather station named after HMS Alert, which wintered nearby in 1875–1876, and its residents serve tours of three to six months. Gjoa Haven, also in Nunavut, averages −13.7 °C, and Dikson, a small port on Russia’s Kara Sea coast, −11.1 °C. Iqaluit, capital of Nunavut, averages −8.6 °C, almost as cold as Yakutsk, but had only 7,429 people in 2021.
The coldest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere’s inhabited lands come from two settlements in the Sakha Republic. Verkhoyansk, a town of 1,311 people in 2010, recorded −67.8 °C in February 1892, and the village of Oymyakon recorded −67.7 °C on 6 February 1933. Both lie north-east of Yakutsk, and Oymyakon sits between two valleys that trap the cold air. The full set of records, including −89.2 °C at Antarctica’s Vostok Station in 1983, is in our article on the coldest temperatures ever recorded on Earth, and the national picture is in our ranking of the coldest countries in the world.