The 10 Highest Bridges in the World, and Why Nine Are in China

The highest bridge in the world is the Huajiang Canyon Bridge in Guizhou, China, whose road deck sits 625 metres (2,051 ft) above the Beipan River; it opened on 28 September 2025 and took the record from the Duge Bridge (565 m), which crosses the same river system about 200 km upstream. Nine of the ten highest bridges are in China: five in Guizhou or on its border, two in Yunnan, and one each in Sichuan and Hubei. The only other country in the top 10 is Papua New Guinea, whose Hegigio Gorge Pipeline Bridge (393 m) carried an oil pipeline until it was demolished in 2023. “Highest” here means deck height, the drop from the deck to the ground or water directly below, not the height of the towers.

The ten highest bridge decks on Earth, measured to the valley floor

The table follows Wikipedia’s list of highest bridges, which ranks completed bridges with a deck height of at least 250 metres and cites the HighestBridges.com database among its sources. Figures for individual bridges vary slightly between sources, so the Duge Bridge is quoted at 564 or 565 m and the Sidu River Bridge at anything from 496 to 550 m; the list’s figures are used throughout.

Deck height is not the same as structural height. The Huajiang Canyon Bridge’s taller tower is 262 m high, yet its deck hangs 625 m above the river because the towers stand on the canyon rims. France’s Millau Viaduct is the opposite case: its tallest pier rises from the valley floor to give a structural height of 343 m, but the deck is only about 270 m above the ground (the list’s table gives 277 m). A deep, narrow gorge, not a tall structure, is what puts a bridge on this list. That simple fact explains most of the country pattern that follows.

Guizhou and Yunnan: a karst plateau cut by the Beipan River

Of the 83 completed bridges on the 250-metre list, 74 are in China, and about 40 of those are in Guizhou or on its border. The reason is the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau, or Yungui Plateau. Guizhou lies at its eastern end with an average altitude of about 1,100 m, and 92.5% of its 176,167 km² is mountains and hills. Across the north-east of the plateau the landscape is karst, rolling uplands broken by gorges and sheer-sided canyons hundreds of metres deep. Guizhou has 984 rivers longer than 10 km, and in their lower reaches most flow through deep, narrow valleys, which is exactly the terrain where a road must either drop to the river or leap across it.

The Beipan River alone explains a large share of the list. The Huajiang Canyon Bridge crosses it, the Duge Bridge spans the gorge of the Nizhu River, a Beipan tributary, on the Guizhou–Yunnan border, and the Zangkejiang Bridge crosses it again between Shuicheng and Pu’an. An earlier world record-holder, the Beipan River Guanxing Highway Bridge (366 m, 2003), sits on the same river. Before the Huajiang bridge opened, crossing its canyon took about 70 minutes by mountain roads and ferries; the bridge cut it to just over a minute.

Yunnan contributes the Puli Bridge near Xuanwei (485 m, 2015), which cut the drive from Xuanwei to the Guizhou border from four hours to one, and the Jin’an Bridge near Lijiang (461 m, 2020), where the Jinsha River, the upper Yangtze, runs through its gorge. Hubei’s Sidu River Bridge (496 m, 2009) lies in the belt of mountains that separates the Sichuan Basin from the lowlands of eastern Hubei, the same belt that the Yangtze pierces 50 km to the north to form the Three Gorges. Its pilot cable was the first ever strung across a gorge by rocket, on 6 October 2006, because neither boats nor helicopters could be used there.

Dams complicate the measurement. Deck height is taken from the original river level, but several of these gorges have since been flooded by dams. The Yachi River Bridge is officially 434 m high on the list but crosses the Dongfeng Dam reservoir, so its deck is only about 306 m above the water; the Zangkejiang and Jin’an bridges are likewise lowered in practice by the Guangzhao and Jin’anqiao dams.

Why China builds them: 199,000 km of expressway and a push into the poor southwest

Rugged terrain exists in many countries. What China added was a policy of driving fast, straight roads through it. China opened its first expressway, the Shanghai–Jiading, only in 1988. In January 2005 the transport ministry set out the “7918” national network (later expanded to the 71118 plan) of radial, north–south and east–west trunk routes, and the network grew to 184,000 km by the end of 2023 and about 199,000 km by the end of 2025, the longest in the world. It now reaches over 99% of cities with more than 200,000 people. Expressway engineering prefers gentle gradients and curves, so instead of switchbacking down a canyon wall the route crosses at rim level, and the bridge becomes extraordinarily high by default.

Several of the bridges on the list sit on these national trunk routes. The Duge and Puli bridges both carry the G56 Hangzhou–Ruili Expressway, the Sidu River Bridge the G50 Shanghai–Chongqing Expressway, and the Jin’an Bridge the G4216 Chengdu–Lijiang Expressway. Provincial policy pushed further. Guizhou was historically one of China’s poorer provinces, and in 2017 its governor, Sun Zhigang, announced plans for 10,000 km of highways, 4,000 km of high-speed rail and 17 airports within three years. The Huajiang Canyon Bridge was justified partly by the revitalisation of a remote, poor mountain province and partly by tourism, with plans for an extreme-sports centre at the bottom of the canyon. The Qingshui River Bridge (406 m) shortened the road from Weng’an County to Guiyang from 160 km to 38 km.

Papua New Guinea and Mexico: an oil pipeline and the Durango–Mazatlán highway

The one non-Chinese bridge in the top 10 was not built for traffic at all. The Hegigio Gorge Pipeline Bridge, a 470-metre suspension span over the Tagari River in Papua New Guinea’s Southern Highlands Province, carried oil from the South East Mananda oil field. On completion in 2005 it became the world’s highest bridge, a title it kept until China’s Sidu River Bridge opened in 2009. Severely damaged in the 2018 Papua New Guinea earthquake, it was demolished in 2023, and it remains on the list as a completed structure of record. The cause here was a commercial one: an oil field in rugged highland country and a pipeline that had to cross a deep gorge.

Just below it, at No. 11, is Mexico’s Baluarte Bridge, the highest bridge in the Americas. It crosses a gorge of the Sierra Madre Occidental between Concordia in Sinaloa and Pueblo Nuevo in Durango with a deck about 390 m above the Baluarte River, and its 520 m cable-stayed span is the longest in North America. Built from 2008 and opened to traffic in late 2013 on the Durango–Mazatlán highway (Mexico 40D), it cut the trip between the two cities from about six hours to two and a half. The pattern matches China’s on a smaller scale: a federal highway programme, a mountain range and a decision to cross rather than descend.

India, the United States, France and Italy: the record holders outside the top 10

The remaining countries on the 250-metre list each have one or two entries. India’s Chenab Rail Bridge in Reasi district, Jammu and Kashmir, has a deck about 359–362 m above the river and is the highest railway bridge in the world. It was completed in August 2022 and opened to trains on 6 June 2025 on the Jammu–Baramulla line, which needed bridges and tunnels to cross the Pir Panjal range of the Himalayas in seismic zone V, the highest-risk category. Here the driver was strategic as well as economic: the road between Jammu and the Kashmir Valley is often cut by winter snow.

The United States has three entries, and its story is the reverse of China’s. The Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado, 291 m above the Arkansas River, was built in six months in 1929 as a tourist attraction, not a through route, yet it held the record for highest bridge in the world from 1929 until 2001, when China’s Liuguanghe Bridge passed it. The Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge on the Hoover Dam bypass (271 m, 2010) and West Virginia’s New River Gorge Bridge (267 m, 1977) complete the American set. Europe’s three are motorway viaducts: the Sfalassa (250 m, 1973) and Italia (259 m, 1974) viaducts in Calabria, southern Italy, and France’s Millau Viaduct (2004).

Put together, the ranking needs three ingredients: deep gorges, a reason to cross them in a straight line, and the money to do it. China’s mountainous south and centre have all three at once, which is why China holds the top nine places. The landscape that makes it possible is explained in our guide to karst topography, the Indian record-holder has its own page on the Chenab Bridge, and for the bridge that is tall rather than high, read about the Millau Viaduct; the American bridge that held the world record for 72 years is profiled in our post on the Royal Gorge Bridge.