The 14 Highest Mountains in the World, Ranked

What are the 14 highest mountains in the world?

The 14 highest mountains in the world are Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri I, Manaslu, Nanga Parbat, Annapurna I, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II, and Shishapangma, ranging from Everest's 8,849 m down to Shishapangma's 8,027 m. All fourteen exceed 8,000 m, the threshold mountaineers use to define this specific tier, and reaching the summit of one without supplemental oxygen is still treated as a serious mountaineering achievement even for experienced climbers.

These figures are the commonly cited elevations used across most current mapping and mountaineering sources, but small variations of a few metres show up between different national surveys and measurement methods, similar to the Everest height revision covered in our Mount Everest location guide. None of that variation changes the relative ranking; the gaps between neighboring peaks are large enough that a metre or two of survey difference never reorders the list.

How many of the world's highest mountains are in Nepal?

Eight of the fourteen eight-thousanders sit partly or wholly within Nepal: Everest, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri I, Manaslu, and Annapurna I. That's the highest concentration of any single country, a direct result of Nepal occupying the central, highest stretch of the Himalayan arc rather than its lower eastern or western ends. Kangchenjunga sits on the Nepal-India border rather than fully inside Nepal, and Cho Oyu and Lhotse both straddle the Nepal-China line the same way Everest does.

Pakistan holds five of the remaining six, all clustered in the Karakoram range around the Baltoro Glacier: K2, Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak, and Gasherbrum II. Shishapangma is the only eight-thousander entirely within a single country, sitting wholly inside the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and notable as the last of the fourteen to be climbed, in 1964, since Chinese political restrictions kept foreign expeditions out of the region for years after most of the other thirteen had already been summited.

Which of these mountains does this company run trips on?

We run treks and guided climbs on four of the fourteen: the Everest Base Camp trek to the base of the world's highest peak, the Manaslu Circuit around the eighth-highest, and both the Annapurna Base Camp trek and Annapurna Circuit around the tenth-highest. None of these is a summit climb of the eight-thousander itself; they're treks to base camp altitude or around the massif, which is a fundamentally different undertaking from the technical, oxygen-assisted mountaineering expedition needed to actually stand on any of these fourteen summits.

The distinction matters for anyone comparing our listings against expedition operators who do sell actual eight-thousander summit attempts. A Manaslu Circuit trek, for example, tops out around 5,106 m at the Larkya La pass, roughly 3,000 vertical metres below Manaslu's own 8,163 m summit, using entirely different logistics, permits, and skill requirements than a Manaslu summit expedition would.

Why do mountain height figures vary between sources?

Height figures vary because different national surveys use different measurement eras, methods, and reference points, and because snow and ice depth on a summit can add or subtract a metre or more depending on when a measurement was taken. Everest's own 2020 remeasurement, covered in detail in our Mount Everest location guide, is the clearest recent example: a joint Nepal-China survey using modern GNSS equipment revised the figure from the long-standing 8,848 m to 8,849 m, a one-metre change that took over a year of data reconciliation between the two countries' survey teams to finalize.

For the other thirteen eight-thousanders, similar small variations exist between older triangulation-based figures and newer satellite measurements, though none has received the same level of formal joint remeasurement attention that Everest has. Trekkers researching a specific peak should expect to see figures within a few metres of each other across different reputable sources rather than a single universally fixed number, and that variation is a measurement-methodology detail, not a sign that any particular source is wrong. K2's own height, for instance, is sometimes listed anywhere from 8,609 to 8,614 m depending on the source, a spread that reflects the same kind of survey-method differences rather than any real uncertainty about which peak ranks second overall.