The most-quoted number in this subject is wrong. Chongqing's Hongyancun is listed almost everywhere at 116 metres down, but that figure measures a ventilation shaft; the platform passengers actually stand on is 106 metres below the street, which beats Kyiv's Arsenalna by half a metre rather than by ten. This countdown ranks the twelve deepest stations you can ride today, from 106 metres down to 72, measured one way only: street level to platform. Not the lowest corner of the station box, not depth below sea level, and never escalator length, because Moscow's Maryina Roshcha has the longest escalator in the city yet sits a metre shallower than Park Pobedy. Membership is stations open to passengers now, and it stretches to urban rapid transit rather than metro badges alone, which is why Portland's light-rail Washington Park qualifies. Pyongyang does not: its famous 110 metres is a system-wide track figure that no source attaches to a named station.
12 Deepest Metro Stations in the World (2026)
The record The deepest metro station in the world is Hongyancun Station, in China — 106 m (348 ft), depth below street level. Source: Wikipedia / Chongqing Rail Transit operator data (Baidu Baike). Verified .
Deepest Metro Stations in the World The Ranking at a Glance
Fun Facts About the World's Deepest Metro Stations
- The world record comes down to half a metre — Hongyancun's platform is 106 m below the street and Arsenalna's is 105.5 m, which is why some sources still name Kyiv the winner.
- The 116-metre figure quoted almost everywhere for Hongyancun is a ventilation shaft, not the platform passengers stand on — the same station, ten metres and one measurement apart.
- A longer escalator does not mean a deeper station — Maryina Roshcha has the longest escalator in the Moscow Metro yet its platform sits a metre above Park Pobedy.
- Hongyancun's two entrances are more than 141 m apart vertically, so the door you pick changes how far you travel to reach the same train.
- Pyongyang's famous 110 metres belongs to no particular station — it is a system-wide track depth, which is why North Korea does not appear in this ranking.
- Barcelona's El Coll - La Teixonera holds both the deepest platform and the highest street entrance on its network — on a steep hillside, those two records travel together.
1. Hongyancun Station
At 106 metres from street level to platform, Hongyancun Station is the deepest place a passenger can stand on any metro system on Earth, and it holds that title by the narrowest margin in this list. Chongqing Rail Transit opened its Line 9 platform in January 2022, and almost every account since has credited the station with 116 metres. That larger number belongs to the deepest of the station's vertical construction shafts, not to the platform: top of rail sits 106 metres down, which puts Hongyancun just half a metre clear of Kyiv's Arsenalna.
The station exists because Chongqing is built on ridges above the Jialing River, so a line running level through the rock ends up buried far beneath the streets on top of it. The vertical difference between two of its entrances is more than 141 metres, and reaching the Line 9 platform from the upper one means a staged climb of moving walkways and escalators that takes several minutes. Line 5, which joined the station in November 2023, runs much closer to the surface.
2. Arsenalna
At 105.5 metres, Arsenalna spent more than sixty years as the deepest metro station on Earth, and by a like-for-like measurement it has surrendered that record by only half a metre. Kyiv opened it in November 1960 on the Sviatoshynsko-Brovarska line, cut into the high right bank of the Dnipro beside the arsenal that gives it its name. Because the margin over Hongyancun is so slim, published sources still disagree about which of the two holds the title, and Kyiv's own metro continues to claim it.
The descent is the experience. Arsenalna has no grand underground hall, just a narrow tunnel between two escalator flights, and riders spend around five minutes travelling down before they reach the platform. That depth has served a second purpose since 2022: like much of the Kyiv network, the station doubles as a public shelter during air raids, which is why images of people sitting on its escalator steps travelled around the world.
3. Zoloti Vorota
Zoloti Vorota drops 96.5 metres beneath Kyiv and has a fair claim to being the most beautiful station in this countdown. It opened at the very end of December 1989 on the Syretsko-Pecherska line, and takes both its name and its design from the Golden Gate, the eleventh-century entrance to the medieval city that stands in the park above it.
Where most deep stations are austere, this one is decorated like a church. The vaulted pylon hall is faced in pale granite, bronze chandeliers hang between the arches, and mosaic portraits of Kyivan Rus princes and saints are set into the walls between the columns. The effect is deliberate, and it turns the long escalator ride into an approach rather than a commute. An underground passage links it directly to Teatralna on the red line, so a great many riders pass through at this depth without ever seeing daylight.
4. Hongtudi Station
Hongtudi Station sits 94.47 metres down and was China's deepest until a neighbour across the same city took the record. Line 6 reached it in September 2012 at a fairly ordinary depth; the Line 10 platforms that opened in December 2017 went far deeper, and it is those that give the station its number.
The transfer between the two lines is the point of interest. Moving from one to the other means a vertical journey of several minutes through a stacked shaft of escalators, and the station is routinely cited for the sheer number of them it needs. Like Hongyancun, it is a product of Chongqing's geography rather than of civil defence: the mountain city's lines burrow straight through hillsides, and its stations end up at whatever depth the tunnel happens to pass.
5. Universytet
Universytet lies 87 metres below Kyiv and opened on the same day as Arsenalna in November 1960, as part of the first stage of the city's metro. It is named for the Taras Shevchenko National University directly above it, and it is the closest thing Kyiv has to the high Stalinist style that defines the deep stations of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
The hall is a pylon trivault in dark red marble, a deliberate echo of the university's crimson buildings at street level, lined with white marble busts of writers, scientists and composers set on the pillars between the arches. It makes the station read as an annexe of the campus above rather than as infrastructure. Like its neighbours on the red line, it has served as an air-raid shelter since 2022, and the reading its passengers do on the escalator is now part of its character.
6. Admiralteyskaya
At 86 metres, Admiralteyskaya is the deepest station in Saint Petersburg and, on the figures in this list, the deepest anywhere in Russia. That is fitting for a city whose entire network had to be driven far below waterlogged ground. It opened in December 2011 after an unusually long wait: trains ran through the tunnels beneath the site for years before a surface entrance could be threaded into the dense historic streets above.
Reaching the platform takes two separate escalator flights with an intermediate landing between them, a arrangement forced by the depth. The station serves the Admiralty, the Hermitage and Palace Square, delivering passengers almost directly into the centre of imperial Petersburg, and its decoration leans into that: naval motifs, dark marble, and portraits of Russian admirals set along the hall.
7. Washington Park
Washington Park is just over 79 metres, or 260 feet, below the west hills of Portland, which makes it the deepest transit station in North America by a very wide margin. It qualifies here under this list's membership rule rather than a strict reading of the word metro: TriMet's MAX is light rail, but the station sits in a deep bored tunnel and works exactly like a metro stop. Nothing on a conventional metro in the Americas is close, and the deepest station on the New York Subway reaches only about 173 feet.
It opened in September 1998, dug because the alignment had to pass beneath the hills between downtown Portland and the western suburbs rather than climb over them. High-speed lifts rather than escalators do the vertical work. Set into the platform wall is a core sample drilled during construction and displayed as a 16-million-year geological timeline, so the station quietly explains its own depth to anyone waiting for a train.
8. El Coll - La Teixonera
El Coll - La Teixonera is 74 metres under the Collserola foothills, making it the deepest station on the Barcelona Metro and one of the deepest in western Europe. It opened in July 2010 as part of a three-station extension of line 5 into the steep neighbourhoods above the city.
The depth is a product of gradient rather than of engineering ambition: the hillside rises so sharply that a level tunnel ends up a long way beneath the streets. Passengers descend through roughly eighteen levels, and the station holds the Barcelona network's record for its longest lift. Its eastern entrance, serving El Coll and El Carmel, is the highest station entrance on the whole system, a neat reminder that on a hillside, depth and altitude are the same problem measured twice.
9. Park Pobedy
Park Pobedy is the deepest station on the Moscow Metro at roughly 73 metres, and it is also this list's clearest example of how slippery the measurement can be. Moscow's own agencies have published 73, 74, 80 and 84 metres for the same station. This countdown uses the lowest well-attested figure, which is the one that squares with the documented 63.4-metre rise of its escalators plus the vestibule above them. It shares the 73-metre mark with Komendantsky Prospekt and is placed first of the two because its vertical rise is the one that is actually documented.
It opened in May 2003 beneath Poklonnaya Hill and serves the Victory Park memorial complex above, with two halls decorated to match in dark and light marble. Large enamel panels depict the Napoleonic war of 1812 and the Second World War. Its escalators run 126.8 metres and carry 740 steps, which was the Moscow record until a station further down this list beat it.
10. Komendantsky Prospekt
Komendantsky Prospekt matches Park Pobedy at about 73 metres, out in the northern suburbs of Saint Petersburg, and it is a reminder that this city puts almost everything a very long way underground. It opened in April 2005 as the northern terminus of the Frunzensko-Primorskaya line and has remained the end of the line ever since.
It is ranked immediately behind Park Pobedy here only because Moscow publishes a documented escalator rise for its station and Saint Petersburg does not; on the depth figure itself the two are level, and neither should be read as deeper than the other. The decoration nods to the aviation history of the district, which takes its name from a historic airfield, and the design is closer to clean late-Soviet restraint than to the palatial marble of the city-centre stations.
11. Maryina Roshcha (Bolshaya Koltsevaya Line)
The Bolshaya Koltsevaya line's Maryina Roshcha sits 72 metres down and is the second-deepest station in Moscow. It opened in March 2023 on the city's big circle line, and should not be confused with the shallower station of the same name on the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya line, which is around 60 metres: two different platforms, two different depths, one name.
This station is the best argument in the whole countdown for measuring depth rather than escalators. Its escalator is the longest in the Moscow Metro, longer than the one at Park Pobedy, and yet the platform it serves is a metre shallower. Escalators climb at whatever angle the shaft allows, so their length says more about geometry than about how far down you end up. It is level with Gayrettepe on 72 metres, and is placed first of the two only because its vertical rise is documented.
12. Gayrettepe
Gayrettepe is 72 metres beneath Besiktas and is the deepest station on the Istanbul Metro, level with Maryina Roshcha at the foot of this countdown. It opened in January 2024 as the city-side terminus of the M11, the line that runs out to Istanbul Airport, so a good share of the people using it are heading for a plane rather than to work.
Depth here is a function of what the tunnel had to avoid: a dense, hilly, heavily built and seismically active city with metro lines already stacked above. The station is engineered around moving very large numbers of people vertically, with dozens of escalators and a bank of lifts working in parallel. Istanbul's second-deepest station, Yildiz on the M7, is only a metre shallower at 71 metres, which shows how tightly packed the bottom of this list has become.
FAQ: The World's Deepest Metro Stations
What is the deepest metro station in the world?
Hongyancun Station in Chongqing, China, whose platform sits 106 metres below street level. It is usually quoted at 116 metres, but that figure measures a ventilation shaft rather than the platform. On a like-for-like measurement it leads Kyiv's Arsenalna, at 105.5 metres, by only half a metre.
How is the depth of a metro station measured?
This ranking measures the vertical distance from street level down to the platform passengers stand on. It deliberately ignores three other numbers that often get substituted for it: the lowest point of the station structure, the station's height above or below sea level, and the length of its escalators.
Why are so many of the world's deepest metro stations in Russia and Ukraine?
Two reasons overlap. Soviet-era networks were driven deep through hard rock beneath wide rivers and dense historic centres, and they were also designed to double as civil-defence shelters. Kyiv and Saint Petersburg stations still serve that second purpose, which is why several of them cluster near the top of this list.
Is the Pyongyang Metro the deepest in the world?
It is often ranked second at 110 metres, but that number describes the depth of the system's track overall, and no source attaches it to a named station. Because this countdown ranks individual stations against a published per-station figure, North Korea does not appear in it.
What is the deepest metro station in the United States?
Washington Park in Portland, Oregon, at 260 feet, or just over 79 metres. It is a light-rail station rather than a conventional metro, and it is the deepest transit station in North America. The deepest true subway station, 191st Street in New York, reaches only about 173 feet.
Planning more of your trip? Keep exploring more world record-breakers.