Landlocked countries of the world

Landlocked does not mean no water

Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan border the Caspian Sea but remain landlocked in the open-ocean sense used here. A large inland body of water is not an ocean coastline. Similarly, lakes, navigable rivers and a river-port industry do not change a country’s basic geographic classification.

A landlocked state can still trade by sea through routes crossing another country. The issue is dependence on transit connections, rather than an absolute inability to move goods to a port. The quality of railways, roads, border procedures and agreements affects how restrictive that geography becomes.

Ethiopia is the most populous member of this list, with a projected 138.9 million residents in July 2026. Kazakhstan is the largest by land area. These are different kinds of scale: one describes how many people live with this geography, the other how much territory it covers.

The 44 countries and their capitals

The list is alphabetical because being landlocked is a classification, not a performance score. The population column provides scale and can be sorted independently. Under our regional assignment, the counts are Africa: 16; Americas: 2; Asia: 10; Europe: 16. There are no entries in Oceania.

44 countries. Scroll the table for all entries.

Landlocked countries in the 196-profile directory, including the two doubly landlocked states.

Country ↕	Capital ↕	Population, July 2026 ↕	Geographic category ↕
Afghanistan	Kabul	45,047,069	Landlocked
Andorra	Andorra la Vella	83,753	Landlocked
Armenia	Yerevan	2,930,915	Landlocked
Austria	Vienna	9,107,266	Landlocked
Azerbaijan	Baku	10,454,855	Landlocked
Belarus	Minsk	8,937,018	Landlocked
Bhutan	Thimphu	802,214	Landlocked
Bolivia	Sucre (constitutional) and La Paz (seat of government)	12,749,291	Landlocked
Botswana	Gaborone	2,603,388	Landlocked
Burkina Faso	Ouagadougou	24,601,700	Landlocked
Burundi	Gitega	14,729,157	Landlocked
Central African Republic	Bangui	5,698,984	Landlocked
Chad	N'Djamena	21,560,380	Landlocked
Czech Republic	Prague	10,527,781	Landlocked
Eswatini	Mbabane	1,269,859	Landlocked
Ethiopia	Addis Ababa	138,902,185	Landlocked
Hungary	Budapest	9,585,818	Landlocked
Kazakhstan	Nur-Sultan (Astana)	21,083,626	Landlocked
Kyrgyzstan	Bishkek	7,400,465	Landlocked
Laos	Vientiane	7,974,017	Landlocked
Lesotho	Maseru	2,389,336	Landlocked
Liechtenstein	Vaduz	40,368	Doubly landlocked
Luxembourg	Luxembourg	687,448	Landlocked
Malawi	Lilongwe	22,785,535	Landlocked
Mali	Bamako	25,932,275	Landlocked
Moldova	Chisinau	2,961,253	Landlocked
Mongolia	Ulaanbaatar	3,556,798	Landlocked
Nepal	Kathmandu	29,629,410	Landlocked
Niger	Niamey	28,814,878	Landlocked
North Macedonia	Skopje	1,804,063	Landlocked
Paraguay	Asunción	7,095,279	Landlocked
Rwanda	Kigali	14,889,693	Landlocked
San Marino	San Marino	33,605	Landlocked
Serbia	Belgrade	6,641,964	Landlocked
Slovakia	Bratislava	5,451,342	Landlocked
South Sudan	Juba	12,436,037	Landlocked
Switzerland	Bern	9,007,798	Landlocked
Tajikistan	Dushanbe	10,978,599	Landlocked
Turkmenistan	Ashgabat	7,736,632	Landlocked
Uganda	Kampala	52,761,469	Landlocked
Uzbekistan	Tashkent	37,724,223	Doubly landlocked
Vatican City	Vatican City	506	Landlocked
Zambia	Lusaka	22,521,915	Landlocked
Zimbabwe	Harare	17,273,580	Landlocked

The directory includes Vatican City, an enclave within Italy. It does not include Kosovo as a separate profile, so lists using a different recognition convention can have a different total. A count should always be read together with the set of places it covers.

The two doubly landlocked countries

Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein borders Austria and Switzerland, both landlocked. A land journey from Liechtenstein to a country with an ocean coastline therefore needs to cross at least two national borders. Its small size makes the condition easy to see on a map, but size is not part of the definition.

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. All five lack an open-ocean coastline. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan’s Caspian coasts do not alter that result. This is why treating the Caspian as equivalent to the ocean would lead to an incorrect explanation of Uzbekistan’s status.

“Doubly landlocked” does not mean that a country has only two neighbours or lies two countries away from every possible coast. It describes the landlocked status of all its immediate neighbours.

Why the UN uses a smaller development group

The UN’s landlocked developing countries, or LLDCs, are a development-policy group of 32 states. The geographic list is broader and includes high-income European countries. Using the LLDC count as the answer to “how many countries are landlocked?” would omit places that meet the geographic definition.

This distinction also prevents an overly simple economic conclusion. Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg show that lack of a coastline is not a ranking of prosperity. Geography creates particular transport dependencies, while institutions, infrastructure, neighbouring markets and economic structure affect the outcomes. The country list identifies the condition; it does not establish a single cause of poverty.