Spread a map of the world's fresh water and Lake Superior looks like the winner: it covers 82,100 km², more surface than any other freshwater lake on Earth. Rank the same lakes by the water they actually hold and Superior falls to third, beaten by a crescent of Siberian rift valley barely a fifth as wide. This countdown runs from 23,615 km³ down to 484 km³, and depth decides nearly all of it. Two rules shape the list. We count fresh water only, which is why the Caspian Sea sits it out despite holding 78,200 km³, more than three times our winner, and why Issyk-Kul and Lake Van are absent too. And we count lakes you can stand beside, which rules out subglacial Lake Vostok, sealed under roughly 4 km of Antarctic ice and never once seen; reservoirs are out on the same principle, so Lake Kariba misses the cut.
15 Largest Freshwater Lakes in the World (2026)
The record The largest freshwater lake in the world is Lake Baikal, in Russia — 23,615 km³ (5,666 cu mi), water volume. Source: Guinness World Records (largest freshwater lake by volume, 23,615.39 km³) + Wikidata P2234 (23,615.39 km³) + Wikipedia List of lakes by volume. Verified .
Largest Freshwater Lakes in the World The Ranking at a Glance
Fun Facts About the World's Largest Freshwater Lakes
- The top two hold more than the other thirteen put together. Lake Baikal and Lake Tanganyika come to 42,365 km³ between them; the remaining thirteen lakes on this list add up to about 40,214 km³.
- Lake Baikal alone outweighs all five Great Lakes. Its 23,615 km³ beats the 22,684 km³ held by Superior, Michigan, Huron, Ontario and Erie combined.
- Depth decides this ranking, not spread. The two deepest lakes on Earth take the top two places here — Baikal at 1,642 m and Tanganyika at 1,470 m — while the widest lake of all, Lake Superior, has to settle for third.
- Lake Baikal is only sixth on this list by surface area. It covers 31,722 km² against Superior's 82,100 km², and still holds nearly twice as much water.
- Lake Erie is eleventh in the world by area and last here. Erie averages just 19 m deep, so it stores less water than General Carrera, a lake barely a fourteenth of its size.
1. Lake Baikal
At 23,615 km³, Lake Baikal holds more fresh water than all five Great Lakes put together, and roughly a fifth of the unfrozen fresh surface water on the planet. It manages that from a surface area only seventh-largest on this list, because it is the deepest lake on Earth: 1,642 m at its lowest sounding, in a rift valley that has been pulling apart for something like 25 million years. That age is the other superlative. Baikal is generally reckoned the oldest lake in existence, and its long isolation has produced hundreds of species found nowhere else, the nerpa among them, the only seal species that lives exclusively in fresh water.
Most visitors reach it from Irkutsk, an hour or so by road to the village of Listvyanka on the western shore. The classic approach is the Circum-Baikal Railway, a slow line of tunnels and viaducts pinned to the cliffs at the southern end. Olkhon Island, out in the widest part of the lake, is the cultural heart of the Buryat shore and the best place to see the water at its most enormous. Go in winter and the whole surface freezes clear enough to walk on, blue-black and shot through with pressure cracks.
2. Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika holds 18,750 km³, which is more than the top three North American lakes combined and about 16 percent of the world's available fresh water. Like Baikal it is a rift lake, long and narrow and extraordinarily deep, reaching 1,470 m and ranking second on Earth for depth. It is also the longest freshwater lake anywhere, stretching some 673 km north to south, which is why four countries share it: Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Zambia. Below about 200 m the water holds no oxygen, so effectively all of its life is crowded into a sunlit rim around a vast dead deep.
That rim is famous among biologists. Tanganyika's cichlids are a textbook case of a species flock, and the clarity of the water makes the lake exceptional for snorkelling and freshwater diving. Gombe Stream and Mahale Mountains, both on the Tanzanian shore and both reached by boat, are where Jane Goodall's chimpanzee research began and remain among the finest places in Africa to track chimps on foot. Kigoma is the usual base, and the old lake steamer that works the eastern shore is a journey in its own right.
3. Lake Superior
Lake Superior contains 12,100 km³, which makes it the largest lake in the Western Hemisphere by volume and the third largest body of fresh water on Earth. By surface area it is the outright champion at 82,100 km², bigger than any other freshwater lake anywhere, and it reaches 406 m deep. It is cold, clear and famously unforgiving: the water rarely climbs far above single figures in Celsius, and the November gales that sink ships have written most of the lake's folklore. Canada holds the northern shore, while Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan share the south.
The shoreline is the attraction. Pictured Rocks on the Michigan side is a run of mineral-stained sandstone cliffs best seen from the water, and the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin are riddled with sea caves that fill with icicles in a hard winter. Isle Royale, far out towards the Canadian shore, is one of the least-visited national parks in the United States and among the best places for a multi-day backcountry hike. Follow the north shore up from Duluth and the road runs past waterfall after waterfall on its way to Thunder Bay.
4. Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi holds 8,640 km³ and runs about 580 km down the southern end of the East African Rift, shared between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania, which knows it as Lake Nyasa. It is deep in the same way its rift cousins are, reaching roughly 706 m, and it is the third largest lake in Africa by area. What sets it apart is biological: Lake Malawi is thought to contain more fish species than any other lake on Earth, the great majority of them cichlids, and the great majority of those found in this lake and nowhere else.
The clear water and the fish together make it a snorkelling destination rather than simply a big lake to look at. Lake Malawi National Park, at the southern end around Cape Maclear, was the world's first national park created to protect a freshwater fish habitat and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Likoma Island, oddly enough sitting in Mozambican waters but Malawian territory, carries a cathedral out of all proportion to its size. Along the shore the wooden dugouts and the sunsets do most of the work.
5. Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan holds 4,920 km³, the fifth largest volume of fresh water in the world and the largest of any lake lying wholly within one country. It covers about 57,800 km² and goes down to 281 m. Hydrologically it is not really a separate lake at all: it sits at exactly the same elevation as Lake Huron and joins it at the Straits of Mackinac, so the two are one body of water that convention keeps apart. Counted together they would outrank Lake Superior for surface area.
Its eastern shore carries the largest freshwater dune system in the world. Sleeping Bear Dunes rises more than 130 m straight out of the water, and Indiana Dunes at the southern tip protects a surprising tangle of habitats within sight of steel mills. Chicago faces the lake squarely, giving the city a beach-lined front and a skyline best appreciated from a boat. North of there, the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin and the Michigan shore around Traverse City are orchard-and-harbour country, at their best in early autumn.
6. Lake Huron
Lake Huron holds 3,540 km³ and covers roughly 59,600 km², making it the second largest Great Lake by surface area and the sixth largest freshwater lake by volume. It reaches 229 m at its deepest. Its defining feature is its shape: Georgian Bay, on the Ontario side, is nearly a lake in its own right, separated from the main basin by the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island. Manitoulin is the largest island in any freshwater lake on Earth, big enough to hold more than a hundred lakes of its own.
Georgian Bay is the reason to come. The Bruce Peninsula ends in white dolomite cliffs and water so clear that the wrecks off Tobermory are visible from the surface, and Fathom Five below it was Canada's first national marine park. Further north, Thunder Bay off the Michigan shore protects a dense cluster of shipwrecks in cold, preserving water. The Group of Seven painted this coastline into Canadian consciousness, and the windswept pines they kept returning to are still there.
7. Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria holds 2,420 km³, and it is the one lake on this list that gets here on sheer spread rather than depth. It covers 59,947 km², the largest lake in Africa and second largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, yet it averages only about 40 m and bottoms out near 81 m. Sitting in a shallow depression between the two arms of the Rift rather than inside a rift trench, it is young by lake standards and its shoreline is shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.
At Jinja in Uganda the lake spills north into the White Nile, and the stretch of whitewater below the outflow has made the town East Africa's adventure capital. The Ssese Islands, a scatter of forested humps off the Ugandan shore, are the place to slow down for a few days. Rubondo Island on the Tanzanian side is a national park where introduced chimpanzees now live wild. Ferries still work the lake between the three countries, and the fish eagles are never far off.
8. Great Bear Lake
Great Bear Lake holds 2,234 km³, which makes it the largest lake lying entirely within Canada and the eighth largest freshwater lake on Earth by volume. It spreads across 31,153 km² of the Northwest Territories in five great arms, reaches 446 m deep, and sits directly on the Arctic Circle. Ice covers it for a good part of the year and the water stays close to freezing beneath, which keeps the fish slow-growing and very long-lived.
Déline, on the western shore, is the only settlement on the whole lake, and it is where Franklin's crew, overwintering in 1825, played games on the ice that his journals describe as hockey — a record that has earned the village a much-argued claim as a birthplace of the sport. The lake is a serious destination for trophy lake trout, with fish that can be older than the anglers catching them. There are no roads in: visitors fly to a lodge and see almost nobody for the rest of the week. On a clear autumn night the aurora runs the full width of the sky.
9. Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario holds 1,640 km³ despite being the smallest Great Lake by surface area at about 19,000 km². The reason is depth: it drops to 244 m, so it stores nearly three and a half times the water of Lake Erie while covering a smaller footprint. It is the last of the chain, taking in everything the other four send down and passing it to the St Lawrence, and the 99 m drop down to it from Lake Erie, over the Niagara Escarpment, is what kept the upper lakes closed to shipping until the canals were cut.
The Thousand Islands, where the lake narrows into the St Lawrence, are the classic outing, a maze of granite outcrops each with its cottage or castle. Prince Edward County on the north shore has turned into wine and sand-dune country, with Sandbanks holding some of the best freshwater beaches in Ontario. Toronto sits on the northwestern shore and runs ferries out to the Toronto Islands. At the far western end the lake gives Niagara-on-the-Lake its mild orchard climate.
10. Great Slave Lake
Great Slave Lake holds about 1,115 km³, and it is the deepest lake in North America, sounding to 614 m in the East Arm. Published volume estimates for it vary more than for anything else on this list, running from roughly 1,070 km³ to over 2,000 km³ depending on how the East Arm is surveyed, but every figure in that range keeps it in tenth place. It covers 27,200 km² of the Northwest Territories and freezes hard enough each winter to carry ice roads.
Yellowknife sits on the north shore and is the launching point for everything here. It is one of the most reliable places on Earth to see the northern lights, sitting under the auroral oval with clear, dry winter skies, and the houseboats moored in Yellowknife Bay are frozen in place for months at a time. The East Arm, a maze of cliffs and islands, is now protected as Thaidene Nëné, a national park reserve co-managed with the Łutsël K'é Dene First Nation.
11. Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca holds 896 km³ at an altitude of 3,812 m, making it the highest large navigable lake in the world and the eleventh largest by volume. It covers about 8,370 km² of the Altiplano on the border between Peru and Bolivia, reaching 281 m deep. At that elevation the air holds little warmth, so the water is cold and startlingly clear, and the light comes at you twice, once from the sky and once off the surface.
The Uros floating islands near Puno are built from layered totora reed and rebuilt continually as the base rots away beneath. Taquile, further out, is known for a weaving tradition recognised by UNESCO, and the island keeps its own social rules about who wears what. On the Bolivian side, Isla del Sol is where Inca tradition places the birth of the sun, reached from the pilgrimage town of Copacabana. Terraces climb the island slopes, still worked, still producing.
12. Lake Ladoga
Lake Ladoga holds 837 km³ and is the largest lake in Europe, covering 17,700 km² north-east of St Petersburg and reaching 230 m in its deep northern end. The southern shore is shallow and sandy; the north breaks into skerries, a scatter of low rock islands cut by glaciers. The Neva runs out of its south-western corner and gives St Petersburg its river. Its winter ice carried the Road of Life, the supply route that kept Leningrad alive through the siege of 1941 to 1944.
Valaam, an archipelago in the northern skerries, holds a monastery that has drawn pilgrims for centuries and is reached by boat from Sortavala or Priozersk. The Karelian shore around it is granite, pine and water in every direction, and the long summer twilight this far north keeps the sky bright most of the night. Ladoga has its own ringed seal, one of very few seals anywhere that lives in fresh water.
13. General Carrera Lake
General Carrera Lake holds 740 km³ across 1,850 km² of Patagonia, which makes it far and away the deepest-for-its-size lake here: it drops to 586 m from a surface smaller than Lake Kivu's. The border runs through it, and so do two names. Chile calls it General Carrera Lake, Argentina calls it Lago Buenos Aires, and it is the second largest lake in South America. Glacial flour suspended in the meltwater turns it an opaque turquoise that changes with the light through the day.
The Marble Caves on the Chilean shore are the reason most people come: a headland of banded marble that wave action has hollowed into columns and tunnels over thousands of years, entered by small boat when the water is calm. The Carretera Austral runs along the western side, one of the great road journeys in the Americas, and Puerto Río Tranquilo is the usual base. Nearby, the Exploradores valley gives access to the Northern Patagonian Ice Field.
14. Lake Kivu
Lake Kivu holds 648 km³ between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, high in the Albertine Rift at about 1,460 m, and reaches 480 m deep. It is meromictic, meaning its layers do not mix: a fresh surface layer floats permanently on deep water that grows saltier and, more unusually, carries an enormous charge of dissolved carbon dioxide and roughly 65 km³ of methane. Rwanda now taps that methane for electricity, one of very few places anywhere generating power from a lake's own chemistry.
For visitors the practical effect of all that gas is an absence: Kivu has no crocodiles and no hippos, so it is one of the few large African lakes where swimming is normal. Rubavu and Karongi on the Rwandan shore are relaxed lakeside towns with beaches and coffee terraces, and the Congo Nile Trail runs the length of the eastern side for cyclists and walkers. Idjwi, out in the middle, is one of the largest inland islands in Africa.
15. Lake Erie
Lake Erie holds just 484 km³, the smallest volume here by some way, and it is on this list purely because it is so wide. It covers about 25,700 km², the eleventh largest lake on Earth by area, but averages only 19 m and reaches 64 m at its deepest, so it stores less water than lakes a fraction of its size. Being shallow makes it the warmest of the Great Lakes, the quickest to freeze over, and the most easily whipped into steep, dangerous waves by a strong wind.
That warmth makes it the most productive fishery of the five, and the western basin around Pelee Island is known as the walleye capital of the world. Point Pelee, jutting into the lake, is the southernmost point of mainland Canada and a famous funnel for migrating birds and monarch butterflies each spring and autumn. On the Ohio shore, the Lake Erie Islands are a summer boating destination, and the lake-effect snow belt east of the lake buries places like Buffalo every winter.
FAQ: The World's Largest Freshwater Lakes
What is the largest freshwater lake in the world?
It depends which measurement you mean, and the two answers are different lakes. By the water it holds, Lake Baikal wins outright with 23,615 km³ — about a fifth of all the unfrozen fresh surface water on Earth. By surface area, Lake Superior wins with 82,100 km³. This list ranks by volume, so Baikal takes first place and Superior third.
Why isn't the Caspian Sea on this list?
Because it is salty. The Caspian Sea is the largest lake on Earth by any measure, holding roughly 78,200 km³ — more than three times Lake Baikal — and every standard ranking counts it as a lake rather than a sea. But its water is brackish, so a freshwater list has to leave it out. Lake Van and Issyk-Kul are excluded for the same reason. If you want the ranking that does include the Caspian, see our list of the largest lakes in the world by surface area.
Why rank lakes by volume instead of surface area?
Because for fresh water, depth is what counts. Surface area tells you how much of a map a lake covers; volume tells you how much water is actually in it. The two rankings disagree sharply — Lake Baikal is only sixth here by area yet first by volume, while Lake Erie is eleventh in the world by area and last on this list.
Why is Lake Erie last when it is one of the Great Lakes?
Lake Erie is wide but very shallow. It covers about 25,700 km², making it the eleventh largest lake on Earth by area, but it averages only 19 m deep and bottoms out at 64 m. That leaves it holding 484 km³ — less than a fiftieth of Lake Baikal, and the smallest volume on this list.
Which continent has the most of the world's largest freshwater lakes?
North America, with seven of the fifteen: the five Great Lakes plus Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake, all of them scoured out by ice sheets. Africa contributes four from its rift valleys, South America two, and Europe one. Asia has just a single entry, Lake Baikal — but it ranks first.
Planning more of your trip? Keep exploring more world record-breakers.