Largest Deserts in the World

About This Dataset

The world's largest desert regions ranked by total area in square kilometres. Contrary to popular belief, Antarctica is the world's largest desert — its interior receives less than 50mm of precipitation per year, qualifying it as a cold desert larger than the Sahara.

Analysis

Antarctic Desert heads the table on 14,200,000, ahead of Arctic Desert (13,900,000) and Sahara Desert (9,200,000) in Area (km²). 13,680,000 separates the highest figure (14,200,000) from the lowest (520,000) in Area (km²). First and second are separated by 300,000, so the leader sits inside the field rather than apart from it. Only 3 of the 8 reach even half the leader's figure (7,100,000 or more).

Source: Wikipedia

Key Findings

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Antarctic Desert leads in Area (km²) with 14,200,000.

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Average Area (km²): 5,346,250 · median: 1,815,000.

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Gap: Antarctic Desert is 27.3× larger than Syrian Desert.

Largest Deserts in the World

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Area

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Table

Data Insights Below

Data Insights

Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart

Admin

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Data Points

8 categories · 1 year

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Top Value

14,200,000

Antarctic Desert

Area (km²) · All Time

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Metrics

Area (km²)

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Period

All Time

Single year snapshot

Methodology & source

Data source: Wikipedia
Coverage: 8 entities · 8 observations
Measure: Area (km²)
Last updated: 6 September 2026
Compiled by: The ANYSTAT team, from the source above

How the figures are calculated

Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.

Rankings & Full Data

8 records · Area (km²) · ranked by All Time

✓ 8 sourced

#	Category	All Time
🥇	Antarctic Desert	14,200,000
🥈	Arctic Desert	13,900,000
🥉	Sahara Desert	9,200,000
4	Arabian Desert	2,330,000
5	Gobi Desert	1,300,000
6	Patagonian Desert	673,000
7	Great Victoria Desert	647,000
8	Syrian Desert	520,000