44 countries have no coastline at all. Two of them, Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan, are "doubly landlocked," meaning even the countries surrounding them are landlocked. You'd have to cross at least two borders from either one to reach open water.
Being landlocked is one of those things most people don't think about until someone points it out. Then suddenly you're staring at a map going "wait, how does Bolivia get its stuff?" Great question. Let's get into it.
What Does "Landlocked" Actually Mean?
A landlocked country is entirely surrounded by land, with no direct access to any ocean or sea. This sounds simple enough, but the implications are enormous. International trade relies heavily on shipping, and about 80% of global trade by volume moves by sea.
If you don't have a port, you're dependent on your neighbours to let your goods pass through theirs. That's a lot of trust and a lot of customs paperwork.
The United Nations actually recognises this as such a significant disadvantage that landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) get their own special category in international development programs. There are 32 of them, and they face higher transport costs, longer delivery times, and more bureaucratic hurdles than their coastal neighbours.
There's also a genuinely odd edge case worth knowing: the Caspian. For decades it was legally ambiguous whether the Caspian counts as a sea or the world's largest lake, a distinction with real consequences, since it determines whether Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and the others bordering it can claim maritime rights or are merely landlocked states with a very large puddle.
A 2018 convention between the five bordering states settled the matter with a special hybrid legal status, but Kazakhstan and its neighbours still can't sail from the Caspian to the open ocean without crossing Russian rivers and locks to reach the Black Sea. Access to a large body of water isn't the same as access to the sea.
The Full List
Here are all 44 landlocked countries, grouped by continent:
Africa (16)
Africa has the most landlocked countries of any continent: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Many of these were created during the colonial "Scramble for Africa" when European powers drew borders with very little regard for geography, trade routes, or, well, anything the people who actually lived there might have wanted.
Europe (14)
Europe is second: Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic (Czechia), Hungary, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Moldova, North Macedonia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, and Switzerland. Europe's landlocked countries generally do fine economically. Switzerland and Luxembourg are two of the richest countries on Earth. Turns out being landlocked matters a lot less when you have excellent rail networks, cooperative neighbours, and a banking sector that makes the ocean irrelevant.
Asia (12)
Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Central Asia is basically one giant landlocked region. Kazakhstan alone is the world's largest landlocked country, bigger than Western Europe combined, and not a single wave in sight.
Mongolia is the second largest, which is fitting for a country that once conquered half of Eurasia and still didn't keep a coastline. At the other end of the scale sits Bhutan, tiny by comparison, wedged between India and China, and one of the few countries on Earth that has never had a coastline in its entire recorded history, rather than losing one along the way.
South America (2)
Bolivia and Paraguay. Bolivia is famously bitter about this. They lost their coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) and have never quite gotten over it.
They still have a navy. It patrols Lake Titicaca. They celebrate "Day of the Sea" every year. It's equal parts heartbreaking and admirable.
Double-Landlocked Countries
This is where it gets properly weird. Two countries are double-landlocked, meaning they're landlocked and entirely surrounded by other landlocked countries. To reach the ocean, you have to cross at least two international borders.
Those two countries are Liechtenstein (surrounded by Switzerland and Austria, both landlocked) and Uzbekistan (surrounded by Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, all landlocked). Uzbekistan is the only double-landlocked country that borders five other landlocked countries. That's impressively inconvenient.
Liechtenstein, for its part, doesn't seem to mind: at 160 square kilometres it's the sixth-smallest country on Earth, and its economy runs on financial services and dental implant manufacturing rather than shipping lanes.
Why It Matters More Than You'd Think
Landlocked countries in the developing world face some serious structural disadvantages:
- Trade costs are 50% higher on average compared to coastal countries
- Transit dependence means political disputes with neighbours can literally stop your economy
- Infrastructure gaps: building roads through mountains to reach a distant port isn't cheap
- Slower economic growth: the World Bank estimates landlocked developing countries grow about 1.5% slower annually
Ethiopia is a good example. It's the most populous landlocked country (over 120 million people) and relies almost entirely on Djibouti's port for international trade. That single corridor handles about 95% of Ethiopia's imports and exports.
One dispute, one natural disaster, one infrastructure failure, and the supply chain for 120 million people gets disrupted.
Nepal is another instructive case. Squeezed between India and China along the Himalayas, it depends almost entirely on Indian territory and the port of Kolkata for its seaborne trade, under a bilateral transit treaty that has to be periodically renegotiated.
When relations between Kathmandu and Delhi soured in 2015 over a new Nepali constitution, border crossings slowed for months, and the resulting fuel and goods shortage was severe enough that Nepal began actively courting an alternative route through China's port access instead, a rare example of a landlocked country trying to diversify its geography, not just its economy.
The Countries That Lost Their Coastline
Not all landlocked countries started that way. Some had coastlines and lost them, usually through war or the breakup of larger states.
Bolivia lost its coast to Chile. Ethiopia had a coast when Eritrea was part of it, but lost access when Eritrea became independent in 1993. Serbia had a coastline when it was part of Yugoslavia, then Montenegro's independence in 2006 made it landlocked. History giveth, history taketh away.
Poland has its own version of this story in reverse: the interwar "Polish Corridor" carved through German territory after the Treaty of Versailles to give newly independent Poland access to the Baltic at Gdynia, precisely because the great powers at the time understood that denying a country the sea was denying it economic independence.
The Workarounds
Landlocked countries have developed creative solutions over the centuries:
- Transit agreements: most landlocked countries have treaties guaranteeing them access to their neighbours' ports
- Free trade zones: special economic areas near borders to reduce friction
- River navigation: Paraguay uses the Paraguay and Paraná rivers extensively for trade
- Air freight: expensive but no borders to cross
- Economic diversification: Switzerland pivoted to banking and services; you don't need a port to wire money
Landlocked countries have also become the world's biggest advocates for pipeline diplomacy. Kazakhstan exports most of its oil via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium line, which runs entirely through Russian territory to a terminal on the Black Sea near Novorossiysk.
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan send gas east through pipelines built with Chinese financing. None of that infrastructure exists because it was convenient. It exists because a landlocked country with something valuable to sell has no other option but to buy its way across someone else's land.
Why This Matters Beyond Trivia
Landlocked status has real economic consequences, and no direct sea trade access typically means higher shipping costs and dependence on neighbouring countries' ports and goodwill. It's part of why landlocked countries disproportionately show up in disputes over transit rights, rail concessions and pipeline routes, and why a change of government next door can be an economic event rather than just a diplomatic one.
It also shapes how these countries develop. Several have leaned hard into services, finance or resource exports that survive the transport penalty, with Switzerland and Luxembourg being the obvious success cases, Bolivia and Chad the obvious counter-examples. Geography isn't destiny, but it does set the difficulty level.
Test Your Knowledge
Think you can locate all 44 landlocked countries on a map? That's harder than it sounds, especially the African ones, which trip up even geography enthusiasts. Give it a go: