Landlocked Countries Explained

The nations with no coastline

A landlocked country is one with no direct access to the open sea. There are more than forty of them, and they are some of the most commonly forgotten places on the map — precisely because they hide in the interiors of continents.

What “landlocked” means

A landlocked country is surrounded entirely by other countries' land (or by inland seas like the Caspian that don't connect to the ocean). To trade by sea, these nations must cross at least one neighbour. There are around 44 landlocked countries in the world today.

Doubly landlocked

Two countries are doubly landlocked — surrounded only by other landlocked countries, so you must cross at least two borders to reach the sea. They are Uzbekistan in Central Asia and Liechtenstein in the Alps. It is one of the best pieces of geography trivia there is.

Where they cluster

Central Asia

The five “stans” — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — are all landlocked, locked between Russia, China and the Caspian.

Central Africa

A wide belt of African nations has no coast: Chad, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana and more.

Central Europe

Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, and the micro-states of Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino and Vatican City all sit inland.

The enclaved countries

Three countries are landlocked inside a single other country: Lesotho (inside South Africa), San Marino and Vatican City (both inside Italy). These tiny enclaves are among the most-missed answers in any geography game.

Why they trip people up

Coastlines give countries memorable shapes; interior countries blur together. The fix is to learn them in regional clusters — the stans, the African interior, the Alpine states — rather than one by one. Our continent guides group them this way.