The 14 Eight-Thousanders

Data

Source: Wikipedia — Eight-thousander. Heights per 2010 Chinese survey for Everest; other heights per standard surveying records.

Note: What You Should Know About the World's Highest Mountains

What "Highest" Actually Means

When we say a mountain is the "highest," we almost always mean its elevation above sea level — how far its summit stands above the average level of the oceans. That is the number used in this chart, and the standard way every guidebook and map compares peaks. This matters because "highest above sea level" is different from "tallest from base to summit." Mount Everest reaches about 8,849 m above sea level (29,032 ft), but a peak such as Mauna Kea in Hawaiʻi is technically taller if you measure from its base deep under the Pacific Ocean to its top — it just doesn't count as the world's highest because most of it sits underwater.

The Four Giants at the Top

• Mount Everest — 8,849 m, the highest point on Earth, towering over the border of Nepal and China in the Himalaya. Its summit was first reached on 29 May 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
• K2 — 8,611 m, the second-highest mountain in the world, straddling Pakistan and China in the Karakoram range. It is often called the "Savage Mountain" because of its steep, technical routes and high fatality rate.
• Kangchenjunga — 8,586 m, the third-highest peak, situated on the border of Nepal and India. It is sacred in Sikkim and long believed to be the world's highest before Everest was properly surveyed.
• Lhotse — 8,516 m, the fourth-highest, sharing the same massif as Everest in Nepal and China. The standard climbing route crosses the South Col, which separate Everest from Lhotse.

Why the Highest Peaks Sit in One Region

Every one of the fourteen peaks on this list — the famous Eight-thousanders, all exceeding 8,000 m — lies in just two ranges: the Himalaya and the Karakoram in Asia. That is no accident. These ranges were pushed up over tens of millions of years as the Indian tectonic plate collided with the Eurasian plate. The slow, grinding collision crumpled the land upward into the tallest mountains on Earth, and that continental collision is still happening today, which is why the peaks keep rising, by a few millimetres each year.

How Mountains Are Measured

• GPS & satellite. Modern surveyors use GPS receivers on the summit and satellite imagery to precisely fix a peak's height and position.
• Traditional surveying. For decades, heights were measured with theodolites and trigonometry, calculating altitude from angles and distances measuring from known sea-level reference points.
• Why numbers change. A peak's "official" height can update as surveys improve — Everest itself was once officially 8,848 m, and a 2020 joint survey refined it to 8,848.86 m, while older records and some national surveys use 8,849 m, as this chart does.
• Sea level is the shared ruler. Because every height is measured from sea level, all the world's mountains can be ranked fairly against one another with a single comparable number.

Climbing the Eight-Thousanders

• Everest was first climbed in 1953; since then all fourteen Eight-thousanders have been summited at least once, with Annapurna I (1950) the first to fall.
• The thin air at these altitudes — roughly a third of the oxygen available at sea level — is impossible to adjust to permanently, so climbers rely on bottled oxygen and weeks of acclimatization.
• Above roughly 8,000 m lies the "death zone," where the body begins to break down, making a quick descent as important as reaching the top.
• The famous Seven Summits challenge takes climbers to the highest point on each of the seven continents — and Everest is the crown jewel of that list.

Fun Facts

• Everest grows by a few millimetres every year as the Indian plate keeps pushing into Asia.
• The Sky: at 8,848 m, if Everest were placed at sea level in the heart of a city, its summit would punch high above the cruising altitude of most commercial jets.
• The Himalayan range is so massive that its own weight bends the Earth's crust and influences rainfall and climate for thousands of kilometres around it.
• Mountains are measured in metres and feet side by side on this page — one metre equals about 3.28 feet, so the six "Eight-thousander" peaks each stand close to or above 26,000 ft.

A Quick Tip

When you hear someone call a peak the "highest mountain in the world," the most useful thing to check is what is being measured — elevation above sea level, that is, the number on this chart. That single definition is why Everest leads the list, with K2, Kangchenjunga, and Lhotse following close behind, and why all fourteen of the world's tallest peaks are found in just two ranges of Asia.