What is the largest country in the world?

What is the biggest country? The biggest country in the world is Russia. Exactly how big is Russia? It has a total land area of 17.1 million km², or 6.6121 million square miles. 

Russia exists in the Eurasian continent, sharing land borders with many many countries. It shares land borders with China, North Korea, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Norway. If we count martime (water) borders, it also borders the United States and Japan.

Simple map of Russia - the largest country in the world

Political map of Russia

It's a common misconception that only the USSR was the largest country in the world, but that after the USSR ended Russia was no longer the largest. But Russia is the largest country, even since the USSR disappeared.

The second largest country in the world is Canada. Its area is 9.985 million km², or 3,855,100 square miles. It is in North America, and shares a border to south with the United States.

Canada - the second largest country on Earth

The third largest country is China, which has an area of 9.597 million km², or 3,700,000 square miles - only slightly smaller than Canada. And who knows ... with China claiming so much maritime area in the South China Sea, maybe China will someday start to claim land in other countries and become bigger than Canada! Though of course much of the world will not recognize any Chinese annexation of other countries' land.

If you have any information to add about Russia, Canada, or China, please add a comment below!