Tripoints: where three countries meet

Who has the most

China touches 15, well ahead of Russia with 10.^[1] It is the same story as neighbours: a country with many neighbours in a ring around it has a tripoint wherever two of them meet at its edge.^[1][2]

Austria, with 9, is the surprise near the top.^[1] It is a small country, but it is long and thin and lies across the middle of Europe, so it borders eight others, and they keep meeting each other along its edge.^[1][2]

#	Country	Tripoints
1	China	15
2	Russia	10
3	Austria	9
4	Brazil	9
5	DR Congo	9
6	France	7
7	Germany	7
8	Hungary	7
9	Mali	7
10	Niger	7
11	Tanzania	7
12	Ukraine	7

Three countries, two meetings

Nine trios meet twice.^[1] Usually one of the three is squeezed between the other two, and they meet at both its ends.^[1] Mongolia is the biggest example: China and Russia meet at its western tip and again at its eastern one, two tripoints for one trio.^[1] Andorra between France and Spain, Liechtenstein between Austria and Switzerland, and Bhutan and Nepal between China and India work the same way.^[1]

Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran meet twice for a different reason: Azerbaijan comes in two pieces, the mainland and Nakhchivan, and each piece meets Armenia and Iran on the Aras river.^[1][2]

#	Trio	Tripoints
1	Andorra–France–Spain	2
2	Armenia–Azerbaijan–Iran	2
3	Austria–Liechtenstein–Switzerland	2
4	Bhutan–China–India	2
5	China–India–Nepal	2
6	China–Mongolia–Russia	2
7	Israel–Jordan–Palestine	2
8	Moldova–Romania–Ukraine	2
9	Eswatini–Mozambique–South Africa	2

Neighbours that never meet

Fifteen times, three countries all border each other but their three borders never come together.^[1][2] Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil are one: each pair shares a border, but Paraguay sits in the gap where they would meet.^[1] Kaliningrad causes several more: Russia borders Lithuania and Poland only through its Baltic exclave, so trios like Belarus, Lithuania and Russia never meet.^[1][2]

And nine countries have two or more neighbours but no tripoint at all: Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Panama, the United Kingdom and the United States.^[1][2] Most are in the Americas, where North and Central America form a chain: Canada to the United States to Mexico, and Nicaragua to Costa Rica to Panama, with no three countries touching at once.^[1]

The far corners

The northernmost tripoint is Finland–Norway–Sweden, at 69.0°N, inside the Arctic Circle.^[1] The southernmost is Argentina–Brazil–Uruguay, at 30.2°S; further south, every border runs between just two countries.^[1]