Highest Sand Dunes in the World, Continent by Continent

The highest sand dune in the world is the Duna Federico Kirbus in Catamarca Province, north-west Argentina, which rises about 1,230 m (4,035 ft) from its base. Second is Cerro Blanco, near Nazca in Peru, at about 1,176 m (3,858 ft), and third is the Medanoso dune in Chile’s Atacama Desert, at about 550 m (1,800 ft). The figures come from the table of the world’s highest dunes in Wikipedia’s “Dune” article as of October 2026, which warns that it is partly based on estimates. All three leaders are in South America, where wind piles desert sand against the foothills of the Andes. Outside South America, the regional leaders are the Badain Jaran dunes in China (about 500 m), a 420 m dune in Algeria’s Erg Tifernine, Mount Tempest in Australia (280 m), Star Dune in Colorado (230 m) and the Dune of Pilat in France (about 105 m).

Measured from the base: why dune heights disagree

A dune’s height can mean two different things, and lists that mix them produce very different rankings. The table above uses height from base, the rise of the sand above the ground it sits on. Height above sea level is something else. The crest of the Duna Federico Kirbus stands at about 2,845 m above sea level, but Star Dune in Colorado reaches about 2,730 m above sea level, almost as high, because the whole San Luis Valley lies high in the Rockies. China’s Mingsha dunes at Dunhuang top 1,725 m above sea level, but their height from base is not known, so they cannot be ranked. On Australia’s Moreton Island, where the dune rises straight from the coast, the two numbers are the same, about 280 m.

Even height from base is hard to fix. Where sand drapes over a hidden rock ridge, nobody agrees where the dune ends and the mountain begins. The figures also come from different surveys. Wikipedia’s Badain Jaran article puts the desert’s tallest dune, Bilutu Peak, at 500 m “from the base” in one place and 450 m above the surrounding area in another. Its Sossusvlei article gives Big Daddy about 325 m, against 383 m in the ranking table. The Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism, meanwhile, has described Big Daddy and Dune 7 as the highest in the world. The ranking that follows should therefore be read as a set of bands rather than a precise order below second place, taken here region by region.

South America’s Andean dunes: Argentina, Peru and Chile

Argentina: the Duna Federico Kirbus

The world leader lies in the Bolsón de Fiambalá, a semicircular sandy valley in Catamarca Province near the town of Fiambalá, which itself sits at about 1,505 m on the edge of the Altiplano. The dune is named after the Argentine journalist and researcher Federico Kirbus, who established its true height. It is a fixed linear dune: its surface is constantly reshaped by the wind, but the dune itself does not migrate. At about 1,230 m it is higher than the highest point of 53 UN-recognised sovereign states. High altitude and an extremely dry climate leave it almost without vegetation.

Peru: Cerro Blanco above Nazca

Cerro Blanco, in Nazca Province of the Ica Region, rises about 1,176 m from its base to a crest of about 2,080 m above sea level. It is the highest dune in Peru and second in the world. The same coastal desert holds the dunes around the Huacachina oasis near Ica. Its Wikipedia article says they reach up to 500 m and draw tourists for sandboarding, and the oasis was pictured on the back of Peru’s 50 nuevo sol note in 1991.

Chile: the Medanoso dune in the Atacama

The Medanoso dune, Chile’s highest at about 550 m, rises in the Atacama Desert of the country’s north, its crest about 1,660 m above sea level. More on the desert that surrounds it is in the Atacama Desert guide.

Asia, the Middle East and Africa: from Badain Jaran to the Namib

China: the Badain Jaran Desert

Asia’s highest dunes are in the Badain Jaran Desert, which covers 49,000 km² of Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Ningxia and is China’s third-largest desert. Its megadunes average about 400 m from the base, and the biggest are the world’s tallest stationary dunes. Only their surface sand shifts; the lower layers have been compacted for more than 20,000 years into hardened sand and sandstone, and high moisture inside the dunes helps hold them together. The name is Mongolian for “mysterious lakes”, after the more than 140 lakes lying in the hollows between the dunes, some fresh, others extremely salty.

Iran and the Arabian Peninsula: Rig-e Yalan and the Empty Quarter

The Middle East’s leader is Rig-e Yalan, about 470 m high, in the Lut Desert of Kerman province, Iran. The Lut was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List on 17 July 2016. Its sand has been measured at 70.7 °C, the highest land surface temperature known on Earth. Further south-west, the Rub’ al Khali, or Empty Quarter, has dunes up to 250 m high. Seif dunes there stretch for almost 200 km and exceed 300 m. In the United Arab Emirates, Moreeb Dune near the Liwa Oasis is reported to be 300 m high with a 50-degree slipface, and hosts hill-climb races.

Algeria and Namibia: the Sahara and the Namib

Africa’s highest dune is a draa, a giant compound dune, 420 m high in the Erg Tifernine of the Algerian Sahara. The neighbouring Grand Erg Oriental, about 185,000 km² of north-east Algeria, holds the largest accumulation of star dunes in the world across roughly 66,000 km² of its southern half. Star dunes form where the wind blows from several directions, so they grow upwards rather than sideways; the types of dunes explains the main shapes.

In southern Africa, the ranking table gives 383 m to Namibia’s Big Daddy, the highest dune in the Sossusvlei area, which stands near the white clay pan of Deadvlei and faces another giant known as Big Mama. The same entry covers Dune 7 near Walvis Bay, named because it stood seven miles from the town centre and now inside Dorob National Park; an entry fee has been charged since 1 December 2022. Many Sossusvlei dunes exceed 200 m. Their orange-to-red colour comes from iron oxide, and the older the dune, the redder it is. The Namib Desert guide covers the wider sand sea.

Morocco’s Erg Chebbi, by comparison, rises to about 150 m above the surrounding rocky hamada, along a strip about 28 km long beside the Algerian border.

Australia, North America and Europe: Moreton Island, Colorado and Arcachon

Australia: Mount Tempest on Moreton Island

Oceania’s leader is a coastal dune. Mount Tempest, the highest point of Moreton Island, 58 km north-east of Brisbane in Queensland, stands 280 m high and is reputedly the highest stabilised coastal sandhill in the world. Storm Mountain nearby reaches 264 m. Moreton is the third-largest sand island in the world, and 98 percent of it is national park.

United States: Star Dune in Great Sand Dunes National Park

North America’s highest dune is Star Dune in Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Colorado, at about 230 m (750 ft) above the floor of the San Luis Valley. After the lakes that once covered the valley floor, among them ancient Lake Alamosa, receded, the exposed sand was blown by south-westerly winds into a curve of the Sangre de Cristo Range. There, storm winds blowing back towards the valley make the dunes grow vertically. The dunefield covers about 78 km² and holds over 5 billion m³ of sand.

France: the Dune of Pilat

Europe’s highest dune is the Dune of Pilat on Arcachon Bay, 60 km south-west of Bordeaux. In 2018 its crest stood 106.6 m above sea level. It is about 2.7 km long and 500 m wide and holds roughly 60 million m³ of sand. Unlike the inland giants, Pilat is a foredune on the Atlantic shore and is creeping inland, burying parts of the forest, houses, roads and parts of the Atlantic Wall. At its foot, in 2013, a tourist found an Iron Age funeral urn dating from about 800 BC.

Read region by region, the ranking has a clear pattern. The world’s tallest dunes build up where a steady wind meets a barrier, such as the Andes in Argentina and Peru or the Sangre de Cristo Range in Colorado. Open sand seas like the Sahara and the Namib produce wide fields of very large dunes, but none as high as the two Andean leaders.