Landlocked Countries: All 44 Nations Without a Coast

What landlocked actually costs

No coastline means no seaports, and no seaports mean every ton of imports and exports pays to cross someone else’s territory first. It’s a real economic handicap, which is why history’s landlocked countries have fought, sued, and negotiated so hard over sea access. Bolivia lost its coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific in the 1880s and has never accepted the result emotionally: it still maintains a navy, training on Lake Titicaca, waiting for a coastline that hasn’t existed for more than a century. That detail wins trivia nights and breaks hearts in equal measure.

Not every landlocked state suffers, mind you. Switzerland, Austria, and Luxembourg do fine, and Liechtenstein, doubly landlocked, ranks among the richest places per person on Earth. Europe generally shows that with good neighbors and good rivers, the ocean is optional.

The list’s greatest hits

The 44 span every continent except the island ones, with dense clusters in Europe, Africa, and Central Asia. The quiz-relevant standouts:

• Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan: the doubly landlocked pair. Reaching the sea from either requires crossing at least two borders. Uzbekistan’s status carries an asterisk lovers of pedantry should know: two of its neighbors touch the Caspian, which is a lake, unless you argue it’s a sea, in which case the asterisk grows.
• Kazakhstan: the largest landlocked country in the world at 2,724,900 km², though it does front the Caspian.
• Ethiopia: the most populous landlocked country, with 135,500,000 people, coastless since Eritrea’s independence in 1993.
• Bolivia and Paraguay: South America’s only two, both war casualties, both covered in the South America map quiz.
• South Sudan: the newest, landlocked from birth in 2011.
• Nepal and Bhutan: landlocked against the Himalayas, about as far from the sea vertically as horizontally.
• Vatican City and San Marino: landlocked inside a single country, Italy, which is its own special category of surrounded.

The full table below renders from the country data layer, so it stays current. Cross-reference it with the smallest countries list and you’ll notice the overlap: microstates are disproportionately landlocked, having been swallowed by neighbors everywhere except the map.