Geographys
Play
Support Geographys

The longest and shortest land borders

We measured all 322 land borders on the site's map. Canada–United States comes out on top by more than 2,300 km; Italy–Vatican City, at the bottom, is 4 km long.

Computed from the site’s dataLast checked 17 October 2026Suggest a correction

The countries on either side of the ten longest land borders.

The site's land-border graph links 322 pairs of countries.[1] We measured every one of them along the 1:50m map the games are drawn on: 210,979 km of border in all, 62 borders over 1,000 km and 31 under 100.[2]

The longest

Canada–United States is the longest by a distance: 7,801 km on our map, counting the line across the continent and Alaska's border with Canada together.[2] The International Boundary Commission, which maintains it, gives the full length as 8,891 km.[3] The difference is the map: at 1:50m, small bends are smoothed away, so a border measured on it comes out shorter than one surveyed on the ground.[2]

Kazakhstan–Russia is second at 5,448 km on our map.[2] It is one unbroken line, and Kazakh officials call it the world's longest continuous land border, at 7,598.8 km.[4]

Five of the top ten touch Russia, China, Mongolia or Kazakhstan, the four countries that fill the middle of Asia.[2] Argentina–Chile, third, runs most of the north–south length of South America.[2]

#BorderLength on the map
1Flag of CanadaFlag of United StatesCanada–United States7,801 km
2Flag of KazakhstanFlag of RussiaKazakhstan–Russia5,448 km
3Flag of ArgentinaFlag of ChileArgentina–Chile4,610 km
4Flag of ChinaFlag of MongoliaChina–Mongolia4,249 km
5Flag of ChinaFlag of RussiaChina–Russia3,130 km
6Flag of MongoliaFlag of RussiaMongolia–Russia2,770 km
7Flag of IndiaFlag of PakistanIndia–Pakistan2,533 km
8Flag of MexicoFlag of United StatesMexico–United States2,478 km
9Flag of BoliviaFlag of BrazilBolivia–Brazil2,450 km
10Flag of KazakhstanFlag of UzbekistanKazakhstan–Uzbekistan2,114 km
11Flag of MaliFlag of MauritaniaMali–Mauritania2,113 km
12Flag of AngolaFlag of DR CongoAngola–DR Congo2,108 km
13Flag of ChinaFlag of IndiaChina–India2,108 km
14Flag of AfghanistanFlag of PakistanAfghanistan–Pakistan2,054 km
15Flag of BangladeshFlag of IndiaBangladesh–India2,007 km
Rounded to the nearest kilometre, measured on the 1:50m map.

The shortest

At the other end, Italy–Vatican City measures 4 km on our map.[2] Guinness World Records gives 3.2 km and calls it the shortest frontier between two sovereign countries.[5]

Azerbaijan–Türkiye comes next at 7 km. It exists only because of Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan's exclave west of Armenia, which touches Türkiye for a few kilometres.[2] Egypt–Palestine, 13 km, is the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt, and France–Monaco, 9 km, wraps around Monaco on the landward side.[2]

#BorderLength on the map
1Flag of ItalyFlag of Vatican CityItaly–Vatican City4 km
2Flag of AzerbaijanFlag of TürkiyeAzerbaijan–Türkiye7 km
3Flag of FranceFlag of MonacoFrance–Monaco9 km
4Flag of EgyptFlag of PalestineEgypt–Palestine13 km
5Flag of CroatiaFlag of MontenegroCroatia–Montenegro16 km
6Flag of AustriaFlag of LiechtensteinAustria–Liechtenstein26 km
7Flag of North KoreaFlag of RussiaNorth Korea–Russia30 km
8Flag of SwitzerlandFlag of LiechtensteinLiechtenstein–Switzerland31 km
9Flag of ItalyFlag of San MarinoItaly–San Marino32 km
10Flag of ArmeniaFlag of IranArmenia–Iran33 km
11Flag of AndorraFlag of FranceAndorra–France38 km
12Flag of AndorraFlag of SpainAndorra–Spain41 km
13Flag of FranceFlag of LuxembourgFrance–Luxembourg47 km
14Flag of MontenegroFlag of KosovoKosovo–Montenegro53 km
15Flag of HungaryFlag of SloveniaHungary–Slovenia60 km
Shortest first. Borders too small for the 1:50m map are listed below instead.

Too small to measure

Six borders in the graph don't show up on the 1:50m map at all: Botswana–Zambia, Canada–Denmark, Cyprus–United Kingdom, Spain–United Kingdom, Morocco–Spain and France–Netherlands.[1] Most run through a territory rather than the country itself: Gibraltar for the UK and Spain, Saint Martin for France and the Netherlands, Greenland's half of Hans Island for Denmark and Canada.[2]

One of them may be the shortest border anywhere. Spain's border with Morocco includes the Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, a rock off the Moroccan coast joined to the mainland by a strip of sand: a border of about 85 metres.[6]

Botswana and Zambia meet on the Zambezi at Kazungula. The meeting is so short that some reports say the two don't share a land border at all; since 2021 a 923 m road and rail bridge has crossed the river between them.[7]

How we counted

We took every pair of countries the site's border graph links (GeoNames' neighbour lists, plus a few borders that only exist through a territory) and measured the line the two countries' shapes share on the 1:50m Natural Earth map, adding up every stretch.[1][2] Lengths are great-circle distances between the map's points.[2]

Measured lengths depend on the scale of the map: the finer the map, the more bends it shows and the longer the line gets. Treat the figures here as a fair comparison between borders, not as each border's official length.[2]

Sources

  1. [1]
    countryInfo.txt · GeoNames

    Each country's neighbours, currency, languages and time zones, as the site's games and Globe Atlas use them.

  2. [2]
    Admin 0 – Countries, 1:50m · Natural Earth, via the world-atlas package

    The country shapes the site's maps and games are drawn from; border lengths are measured along them.

  3. [3]
    About the International Boundary Commission · International Boundary Commission (Canada–United States)
  4. [4]
  5. [5]
    Shortest land boundary · Guinness World Records
  6. [6]
  7. [7]
    Botswana and Zambia open $260m Kazungula bridge · Business Day, from Bloomberg News · 10 May 2021

More by the numbers

Know a better source? Send a link for any fact on this page.
Primary sources (treaties, court rulings, official records) help most.