The countries with the most land neighbours
China and Russia each border 14 countries. Brazil, Germany and DR Congo border nine. Which countries have the most neighbours, and why?
The question of which country has the most neighbours has two answers, depending on how you count. China and Russia each share a land border with 14 sovereign countries. On our map China has 15, because Hong Kong is drawn as its own territory with its own border. Either way, the two giants of Asia are well clear of the rest.
| Country | Neighbours | Borders |
|---|---|---|
| China | 14 (+ Hong Kong) | Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Vietnam |
| Russia | 14 | Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Ukraine |
| Brazil | 9 | Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela |
| DR Congo | 9 | Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia |
| Germany | 9 | Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland |
| Austria | 8 | Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland |
| France | 8 | Andorra, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain, Switzerland |
| Serbia | 8 | Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania |
| Tanzania | 8 | Burundi, DR Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia |
| Turkey | 8 | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Syria |
| Zambia | 8 | Angola, Botswana, DR Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe |
| Algeria | 7 | Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia, Western Sahara |
| Hungary | 7 | Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine |
| Iran | 7 | Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan |
| Mali | 7 | Algeria, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal |
| Niger | 7 | Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, Mali, Nigeria |
| Poland | 7 | Belarus, Czechia, Germany, Lithuania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine |
| Saudi Arabia | 7 | Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Yemen |
| Sudan | 7 | Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, South Sudan |
| Ukraine | 7 | Belarus, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia |
Why China and Russia lead
Size alone does not explain it. Canada is the second-largest country in the world and has one neighbour. What China and Russia share is a long land border running through the middle of a continent full of countries. China’s western and southern frontier runs through Central and South Asia, touching nine countries from Kazakhstan round to Myanmar. Russia’s border runs from Norway in the Arctic to North Korea on the Pacific, passing a string of former Soviet republics on the way.
Russia’s count also depends on Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic coast. It is cut off from the rest of Russia and is the only reason Russia borders Poland and Lithuania. Without it, Russia would have twelve neighbours.
Germany: nine neighbours, no giants
Germany is the surprise. It is not especially large, but it sits in the middle of a crowded continent and borders nine countries. Most of them are on its western and southern sides, where Europe’s borders were drawn tightly around small states such as Luxembourg and Switzerland.
How microstates raise the count
Europe’s totals are pushed up by its tiny states. France’s eight neighbours include Andorra and Monaco. Austria’s include Liechtenstein, and Switzerland borders Liechtenstein too. Italy has six neighbours, and two of them, San Marino and Vatican City, lie entirely inside it. Without its microstates Europe would look much more like the rest of the world, where four or five neighbours is typical for a mid-sized country.
Africa’s crowded middle
DR Congo, Tanzania and Zambia all border eight or nine countries. Central and southern Africa has a lot of landlocked states, and many of the borders between them were drawn through the interior with few natural features to follow. Zambia is landlocked and has eight neighbours. Austria and Serbia, also landlocked, have eight too, and no landlocked country has more.
Brazil and the missing French border
Brazil borders every South American country except Chile and Ecuador. It also has a border with France, through French Guiana, which is part of France. We do not count that border, because overseas territories are mapped separately from their parent country. Counting it would give Brazil ten neighbours and France nine.
Neighbours in the games
Knowing who borders whom is the whole of Overland, where you connect two countries by naming the countries in between. A country with many neighbours, like China, Russia or DR Congo, is often the bridge between two regions, and the quickest routes run through them. In Patchwork, where you restore countries missing from the map, the neighbours around a gap are the best clue to what fills it.
Neighbours by continent
Counting only the recognisable countries used as answers in our games, Africa has the most crowded borders. Its 54 countries have an average of about four land neighbours each. Europe’s 44 also average four, and Asia’s 50 just over three. The Americas average under two, because the Caribbean is full of island states with no land border. In Oceania none of the nine countries in our answer pool has a neighbour except Papua New Guinea, which shares New Guinea with Indonesia.
Countries with no neighbours at all
At the other end of the scale, 76 countries and territories on our map have no land border at all. They include large island nations such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Iceland and Cuba, and dozens of small island states in the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
Sources and method
Land borders are from Natural Earth’s public-domain Admin 0 country boundaries, the same data behind Overland and Patchwork. Only land borders count. Overseas territories such as French Guiana are not counted as part of their parent country, but exclaves such as Kaliningrad are. Hong Kong is mapped as its own entity.