Geography & Places

List of Largest Deserts in the World

The ten largest deserts on Earth by area — including the polar ice deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic, which together cover more of the planet than all the sand deserts combined.

10 itemsUpdated Apr 20, 2026

Most people picture a desert and see dunes, camels, and searing heat. But the scientific definition of a desert has nothing to do with sand or temperature — it is simply a region that receives less than 250 millimetres of precipitation per year. By that measure, the two largest deserts on Earth are not hot at all. They are Antarctica and the Arctic. Antarctica is the largest desert in the world, covering about 14.2 million square kilometres. It receives on average less than 200 millimetres of precipitation annually, most of it falling as snow that never fully melts. The Arctic polar desert is a close second. Together these two ice deserts cover an area roughly three times the size of the Sahara, the largest hot desert and the one most people think of first. The Sahara itself is still vast enough to hold the entire contiguous United States and has been expanding southward into the Sahel over the past century — a slow desertification process driven by both natural climate cycles and human land use. Asia's Gobi is a rain-shadow desert, kept dry by the Himalayas to its south. The Atacama in Chile is the driest non-polar desert on Earth; some of its weather stations have never recorded rainfall. Deserts also cover more of the Earth's surface than most people realise — roughly one-third of the land area. And they are home to surprisingly rich ecosystems: the fennec fox, the camel, the saguaro cactus, and human populations that have adapted to extreme aridity for thousands of years, from the Bedouin to the San of the Kalahari.

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#	Name	Type	Area km2	Continent
1	Antarctic Desert Antarctica The largest desert on Earth at roughly 14.2 million square kilometres. A polar desert almost entirely covered by ice, receiving less than 200 millimetres of precipitation per year.	polar	14,200,000	Antarctica
2	Arctic Desert Arctic Circle Covering about 13.9 million square kilometres across parts of Canada, Greenland, Russia, and the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic is the second-largest desert in the world.	polar	13,900,000	Arctic
3	Sahara Desert North Africa At roughly 9.2 million square kilometres, the Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, stretching across eleven countries in northern Africa.	subtropical hot	9,200,000	Africa
4	Arabian Desert Arabian Peninsula Covering most of the Arabian Peninsula at about 2.33 million square kilometres, home to the Rub' al Khali — the largest continuous sand desert on Earth.	subtropical hot	2,330,000	Asia
5	Gobi Desert Mongolia / China A cold rain-shadow desert of 1.295 million square kilometres, sheltered from Indian Ocean moisture by the Himalayas to the south.	cold winter	1,295,000	Asia
6	Kalahari Desert Southern Africa Covering around 900,000 square kilometres across Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. A semi-desert savanna home to the San people.	semi-arid	900,000	Africa
7	Great Victoria Desert Australia Australia's largest desert at 647,000 square kilometres, stretching across Western Australia and South Australia.	subtropical hot	647,000	Oceania
8	Patagonian Desert Argentina / Chile South America's largest desert at 620,000 square kilometres, a cold rain-shadow desert east of the Andes.	cold winter	620,000	South America
9	Syrian Desert Middle East Spanning roughly 500,000 square kilometres across Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia — a stony, arid plateau.	subtropical hot	500,000	Asia
10	Great Basin Desert United States The largest cold desert in North America at around 492,000 square kilometres, covering most of Nevada and parts of Utah, Oregon, and Idaho.	cold winter	492,000	North America

This list is compiled from verified public records and reference sources. Last verified: April 20, 2026.

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