Longest Mountain Ranges in the World, Continent by Continent

On land, the longest mountain range in the world is the Andes, running about 7,000 km (4,300 mi) down the western edge of South America through seven countries, followed by Southern Africa's Great Escarpment at about 5,000 km and North America's Rocky Mountains at about 4,800 km, according to Wikipedia's List of longest mountain chains on Earth (consulted October 2026). The Transantarctic Mountains and Australia's Great Dividing Range share fourth place at about 3,500 km each. If ranges under the sea are counted, nothing on land comes close: the global mid-ocean ridge runs a continuous 65,000 km across the floors of every ocean. Every inhabited continent has at least one range in the top ten, which is why this guide reads the ranking continent by continent.

All of these lengths are approximate. A range has no agreed start and end point, and the figures here are mostly straight-line distances along the chain rather than the length of a winding crest. The same source can give two numbers: the Andes article cites both 7,000 km and 8,900 km.

South America: the Andes and the Chilean Coast Range

South America holds both the world leader and the seventh-longest range, and they run side by side. The Andes stretch from Venezuela and Colombia through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile to the tip of Argentina, 200–700 km wide and widest between 18°S and 20°S, with an average height of about 4,000 m. They formed, and are still forming, as the Nazca Plate and part of the Antarctic Plate slide beneath the South American Plate. That subduction drives the earthquakes of the Chilean coast, including the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, which most studies place at magnitude 9.4–9.6, the strongest ever recorded.

The range holds several continental records. Argentina's Aconcagua, at about 6,961 m in the Andes article (its own article now gives 6,967 m), is the highest mountain outside Asia. Ojos del Salado on the Chile–Argentina border, at 6,893 m, is the world's highest volcano. Because of the Earth's equatorial bulge, the summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador is the point on the surface farthest from the Earth's centre. Between the ranges lies the Altiplano, the second-highest plateau in the world after Tibet, with cities such as La Paz and El Alto on it. More detail on the range's divisions and peoples is in our guide to the Andes.

West of the Andes, the Chilean Coast Range runs about 3,100 km from Morro de Arica to the Taitao Peninsula. It reaches 3,114 m at Sierra Vicuña Mackenna in the Antofagasta Region, merges with the Andes in the Norte Chico, and breaks up in the far south into islands such as Chiloé. It casts a rain shadow, so its seaward slopes are much greener than the land behind them.

Africa: the Great Escarpment and the Atlas

Africa's leader is not a folded mountain chain at all. The Great Escarpment is the steep edge of the high Southern African plateau, curving for about 5,000 km through Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. It began about 180 million years ago, when a mantle plume bulged the crust of southern Gondwana and rift valleys opened on either side, later flooding to become the proto-Atlantic and proto-Indian oceans. Erosion has since pushed the escarpment back by roughly 150 km, and the region has seen no volcanic or mountain-building activity for about 50 million years.

Its sections carry their own names: the Serra da Chela in Angola, the Schwarzrand in Namibia and, best known, the Drakensberg. The edge usually stands above 2,000 m in the east and passes 3,000 m along the border between Lesotho and the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Mafadi, at 3,446 m, is South Africa's highest point, and Thabana Ntlenyana in Lesotho, at 3,482 m, is the highest point in Southern Africa.

The road over Sani Pass shows the scale: it starts at 1,544 m and climbs 1,332 m to 2,876 m at the top. At the other end of the continent, the Atlas Mountains run about 2,500 km through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, separating the Sahara from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Toubkal in central Morocco, at 4,167 m, is the highest peak, and Berber communities make up most of the mountains' population.

North America: the Rockies and the Appalachians

The Rocky Mountains run about 4,800 km in a straight line from the northernmost part of Western Canada to New Mexico, ending near Albuquerque beside the Rio Grande rift. They rose 55–80 million years ago in the Laramide orogeny, when plates slid beneath the North American Plate at a shallow angle and pushed up an unusually broad belt of mountains. The highest summit is Mount Elbert in Colorado, at 4,401 m (14,440 ft), and Colorado has an average elevation of about 6,800 ft (2,100 m). The name translates a Plains Cree word meaning "rocky mountain".

The Appalachians are about 3,200–3,300 km long, running southwest to northeast from central Alabama to Newfoundland, and the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon technically put the range in three countries. They are far older than the Rockies, built by three orogenies starting about 480 million years ago, and once stood as high as today's Alps before 240 million years of erosion. Their highest peak is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, at 2,037 m (6,684 ft). Before plate tectonics split them apart, they were part of the same Central Pangean Mountains as the Scottish Highlands and the Atlas.

Antarctica: the Transantarctic Mountains

The Transantarctic Mountains cross the whole continent for about 3,500 km, from Cape Adare in northern Victoria Land to Coats Land, and divide East Antarctica from West Antarctica. The range is 100–300 km wide and began rising about 65 million years ago as the West Antarctic Rift System opened. Mount Kirkpatrick in the Queen Alexandra Range, at 4,528 m, is the highest summit. Its exposed rocks include the Beacon Supergroup sandstones and coal, a source of many of Antarctica's fossils.

Sailors on James Clark Ross's British expedition first sighted the range in 1841, and the British National Antarctic Expedition of 1901–1904 made the first crossing. Glaciers from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet pour through gaps in the range toward the Ross Ice Shelf, while the McMurdo Dry Valleys form the largest ice-free area on the continent.

Australia: the Great Dividing Range

The Great Dividing Range runs more than 3,500 km from Dauan Island in the Torres Strait, down the full length of Queensland and New South Wales, then west across Victoria until it fades into the Wimmera plains beyond the Grampians. It is the longest range lying entirely within one country. It is low for its length, mostly 300–1,600 m high, and is less a single chain than a belt of ranges, plateaus and escarpments 160–300 km wide. Its name describes its job: it is the watershed between rivers draining east to the Pacific and the Tasman Sea and rivers draining west, including those of the Murray–Darling basin. Mount Kosciuszko, at 2,228 m in the Snowy Mountains, is the highest point in Australia. Three World Heritage areas, the Greater Blue Mountains, the Gondwana Rainforests and the Wet Tropics of Queensland, lie within it, as our Great Dividing Range guide describes.

Asia and Europe: the Himalayas and the Urals

Asia's longest entry is shorter than you might expect. The Himalayas form an arc of about 2,400–2,600 km from Nanga Parbat in the west to Namcha Barwa in the east, across Nepal, India, China, Bhutan and Pakistan, with sovereignty in the Kashmir section disputed among India, Pakistan and China. Their record is height instead: Mount Everest, measured at 8,848.86 m in a joint Nepalese–Chinese survey in 2020, and more than 100 other peaks above 7,200 m. They rose from the collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate, and the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra rise near them, in basins home to some 600 million people. Compared with the Rockies, they are about half as long.

The Urals run about 2,500 km from the Arctic coast to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan, and form part of the conventional boundary between Europe and Asia. Average heights are only 1,000–1,300 m, and Mount Narodnaya reaches 1,894 m. The islands of Vaygach and Novaya Zemlya continue the chain north into the Arctic Ocean, and the range's ores have supported Russian metallurgy since the 18th century.

Under every ocean: the 65,000 km mid-ocean ridge

Measured without the sea in the way, the longest mountain range on Earth is the mid-ocean ridge, a seam of seafloor mountains where tectonic plates pull apart and new crust forms. The connected ridge runs 65,000 km, and the whole oceanic ridge system 80,000 km. Its crest typically lies about 2,600 m below the surface and rises about 2,000 m above the deepest parts of the ocean basins. The first section discovered was the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which separates the North American Plate from the Eurasian and African plates and rises above sea level in Iceland.

Read region by region, the ranking shows that length and height are different records: the long ranges are spread across every continent, while the tallest summits are concentrated in Asia, as the highest mountain on each continent makes clear.