Countries With the Highest Elevation: Where Nations Touch the Sky

Nepal and China share the highest elevation of any country, because the border between them runs across the summit of Mount Everest (8,849 m). Pakistan is next with K2 (8,611 m), then India with Kangchenjunga (8,586 m), and every one of the nine highest national summits on Earth lies in Asia.

After India comes Bhutan, whose Gangkhar Puensum (about 7,570 m) is the highest mountain in the world that nobody has climbed. Tajikistan's Ismoil Somoni Peak (7,495 m) and Afghanistan's Noshaq (about 7,492 m) sit almost level, followed by Kyrgyzstan's Jengish Chokusu (7,439 m) and Kazakhstan's Khan Tengri (about 7,010 m). The first country outside Asia on the list is Argentina, whose Aconcagua reaches 6,961 m, higher than any point in the Americas, Europe, Africa or Oceania.

This ranks each country by its single highest point; ranking by average height gives a very different order, covered further down.

The Top 14 National High Points, Ranked

Where a summit sits on a border, both countries count it as their high point, so Everest appears twice. Heights are the figures most commonly published by national survey agencies; several are rounded because surveys disagree by a few metres.

India's entry needs a footnote. New Delhi claims all of Kashmir, including Gilgit-Baltistan, and official Indian sources sometimes list K2 as the national high point. Within the territory India actually administers, the top is Kangchenjunga on the Sikkim–Nepal border. Khan Tengri's figure also varies: its 7,010 m includes a thick ice cap, and the rock summit is often given as roughly 6,995 m.

Why Asia Holds the First Nine Places

The Himalaya and the Karakoram exist because the Indian plate has been driving into Eurasia for about 50 million years. It is still moving north at roughly 4 to 5 cm a year, and the crust caught between the two plates has been folded, thrust and stacked into the thickest continental crust on Earth. The rock at Everest's summit is marine limestone of the Ordovician period, laid down on the floor of the vanished Tethys Ocean and now lifted almost nine kilometres into the air.

That collision explains why the top of the table is so crowded. All 14 of the world's peaks above 8,000 m are in the Himalaya or Karakoram. Nepal holds eight of them, including Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu and Annapurna as well as Everest and Kangchenjunga. Pakistan has five, all in the Karakoram: K2, Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum II. China shares nine along its southern borders and owns one outright, Shishapangma in Tibet.

Bhutan sits on the same range but tells a different story. It banned climbing on peaks above 6,000 m in 1994, partly out of respect for local belief that the high summits are home to protective deities, and stopped issuing mountaineering permits altogether in 2003. Gangkhar Puensum was attempted four times in the mid-1980s and never climbed, and under current rules it will stay that way. Even its height is uncertain: figures of 7,570 m and 7,564 m both appear, and the exact line of the Bhutan–China border near the peak has never been agreed.

The Pamir and Tian Shan: Central Asia's Former Soviet Summits

North of the Karakoram, the collision's shock wave raised a second knot of ranges. The Pamir, called Bam-i-Dunya or "Roof of the World" in Persian, fills eastern Tajikistan and the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan. Tajikistan's high point has been renamed twice: it was Stalin Peak when Soviet surveyors placed it in 1932, Communism Peak from 1962, and Ismoil Somoni Peak from 1998, after the tenth-century founder of the Samanid state. Across the Panj River, Noshaq in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush was first climbed in 1960 by a Japanese expedition.

The Tian Shan runs east from Kyrgyzstan into Xinjiang. Jengish Chokusu, known in Russian as Pik Pobedy ("Victory Peak"), lies on the Kyrgyzstan–China border and was only recognised as the range's highest summit after surveys in the 1940s; before that, climbers assumed nearby Khan Tengri held the title. Khan Tengri, a striking marble pyramid, stands where Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China meet.

The Andes: The Highest Ground Outside Asia

South America's high points are the product of a different collision. The oceanic Nazca plate is sliding under the South American plate along the Pacific coast, and the melting and crustal thickening that produces has raised the longest continental mountain chain on Earth, about 7,000 km from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego.

• Argentina, Aconcagua (6,961 m). Rising in Mendoza province close to the Chilean border but wholly inside Argentina, it is the highest mountain in both the Western and Southern Hemispheres. For more on the climb, see our Aconcagua guide.
• Chile, Ojos del Salado (6,893 m). On the Chile–Argentina border in the Atacama region, it is the highest volcano on Earth still classed as active, with fumaroles near the summit.
• Peru, Huascarán Sur (6,768 m). The top of the Cordillera Blanca, the most glaciated tropical range in the world. In 1970 the Ancash earthquake broke loose part of its north face, and the resulting debris flow buried the town of Yungay.
• Bolivia, Nevado Sajama (6,542 m). An extinct stratovolcano in Sajama National Park, whose slopes carry some of the highest-growing woodland in the world, stands of Polylepis trees above 4,500 m.
• Ecuador, Chimborazo (6,263 m). Low by Andean standards, but because Earth bulges at the equator its summit is about 6,384 km from the planet's centre, roughly 2 km farther out than Everest's. It is the point on land closest to the stars.

Each Remaining Continent's Rooftop, and Who Owns It

Outside Asia and South America, national high points fall off quickly. Each continent's top belongs to a single country or sits on a disputed or unclaimed border:

• North America: Denali, United States (6,190 m). A 2015 survey trimmed it to 20,310 ft. In January 2025 the US federal government restored the name Mount McKinley, though the State of Alaska still uses Denali. Canada's high point, Mount Logan (5,959 m), is the world's largest mountain by base area.
• Africa: Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (5,895 m). Uhuru Peak on the Kibo cone is the highest free-standing mountain in the world, rising about 4,900 m from the surrounding plains.
• Europe: Mount Elbrus, Russia (5,642 m). A dormant double-coned volcano in the Caucasus, placed in Europe by the usual watershed definition of the continental boundary. Georgia's Shkhara (about 5,193 m) lies on the Russian border a short distance south-east.
• Oceania: Puncak Jaya, Indonesia (4,884 m). Also called Carstensz Pyramid, in the Sudirman Range of Papua. Its equatorial glaciers are among the fastest-shrinking on Earth.
• Antarctica: Vinson Massif (4,892 m). A 2004 GPS survey fixed its height. Under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, no national claim to the continent is recognised, so Vinson is nobody's national high point.

Western Europe's highest mountain has its own complication. The height of Mont Blanc changes with its summit ice cap, and surveyors from Haute-Savoie remeasure it every two years; recent figures have ranged from about 4,805 m to 4,810 m. The mountain's ownership is also disputed. French maps put the summit entirely in France, while Italian maps run the border along the summit ridge, and the disagreement goes back to how the 1860 Treaty of Turin, which transferred Savoy to France, was later mapped. Italy therefore counts Mont Blanc as its high point, while France treats the top as French. The ranges are compared in more detail in our look at the highest mountains on every continent.

How Everest Went From 8,848 m to 8,849 m

Even the number at the top of the table has changed. The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India calculated "Peak XV" at 29,002 ft (8,840 m) in 1856. An Indian survey in 1955 produced 8,848 m, the figure printed in atlases for the next 65 years. A 1999 GPS measurement backed by National Geographic gave 8,850 m, and in 2005 China published a rock height of 8,844.43 m, leaving out the snow and ice on top. For years Nepal and China quoted different figures for the same summit.

After the 2015 Gorkha earthquake raised questions about whether the mountain had shifted, both countries sent survey teams, Nepal in 2019 and China in 2020. On 8 December 2020 they jointly announced 8,848.86 m, including the snow cap, which rounds to the 8,849 m now in general use. The shared figure also settled a diplomatic issue: under the 1961 boundary treaty the Nepal–China border crosses the summit, so the two governments now agree on the height as well as on who owns it.

Highest Summit Versus Highest Average Elevation

A country's single highest point says little about how high most of the country is. China holds a share of Everest, but because its eastern lowlands are so large, its average elevation is usually estimated at about 1,840 m. Pakistan owns K2 yet averages under 1,000 m, because most of the population lives on the Indus plain.

Ranked by mean elevation, the order changes. Bhutan usually comes first at roughly 3,280 m, followed closely by Nepal at about 3,265 m, then Tajikistan (about 3,186 m) and Kyrgyzstan (about 2,988 m). Tiny countries that barely register by summit height move up: Andorra averages close to 2,000 m, and Lesotho, whose high point Thabana Ntlenyana is only 3,482 m, has the world's highest lowest point at about 1,400 m. These averages come from digital elevation models, and published figures can differ by 100 m or more depending on the dataset and the resolution used, so treat the exact numbers as approximate and the rank order as the more reliable result.

The two lists answer different questions. The summit ranking shows where the planet's crust has been pushed highest; the average ranking tells you where people actually live, farm and build roads at altitude. The full comparison is laid out in our ranking of countries with the highest average elevation, and you can check how well you know the world's high places with the mountains and landmarks in our world geography quiz.