The longest tunnel you can drive through is nowhere near the longest tunnel. Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel runs 57 kilometres and the Channel Tunnel 50, but both carry trains. This countdown ranks road tunnels only, and it measures one continuous bore rather than a network's combined total — which is why Sydney's WestConnex sits it out, its headline 22.4 kilometres being three separate motorway tunnels added together. We also count only tunnels the public may actually drive. That rule costs us China's Jinpingshan, a genuine 17.54-kilometre road tunnel under Sichuan that ordinary traffic may not enter: it serves two hydropower stations and, halfway along, the laboratory with the deepest rock cover on Earth. What survives runs from 13.654 to 24.51 kilometres across six countries, and it is shifting fast — eight of the fifteen are Chinese, three opened within the last two years, and Norway is boring a 26.7-kilometre tunnel that will take first place outright.
15 Longest Road Tunnels in the World (2026)
The record The longest road tunnel in the world is the Lærdal Tunnel, in Norway — 24.51 km (15.2 mi), tunnel length. Source: Statens vegvesen (Norwegian Public Roads Administration). Verified .
Longest Road Tunnels in the World The Ranking at a Glance
Fun Facts About the World's Longest Road Tunnels
- The longest tunnels on Earth are not road tunnels at all — Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel runs 57.1 km and the Channel Tunnel 50.5 km, but both carry only trains, so neither qualifies for this list.
- There is a 17.5 km road tunnel that the public may not drive — China's Jinpingshan, under Sichuan, serves two hydropower stations, and halfway along it houses a physics laboratory sitting beneath 2,400 m of rock, the deepest rock cover of any laboratory in the world.
- Norway hired psychologists to design the inside of a tunnel — SINTEF researchers worked on the Lærdal Tunnel, which is broken into four stretches by three rock caverns lit blue at the floor and yellow at the edges to imitate a sunrise.
- Only three of these fifteen are single bores carrying traffic both ways — Lærdal, the Gotthard and the Arlberg, the three oldest European entries. Every one of the twelve newer tunnels was built as twin tubes.
- The deepest of them runs 292 m below sea level — Norway's Ryfylke Tunnel, which is the longest and deepest subsea road tunnel anywhere.
- First place is about to change hands — Norway is boring Rogfast, a 26.7 km subsea tunnel reaching 392 m below sea level and containing two undersea roundabouts, due to open in 2033.
1. Lærdal Tunnel
At 24.51 km, the Lærdal Tunnel has been the longest road tunnel in the world for a quarter of a century, and driving it takes about twenty minutes at the 80 km/h limit. It was bored beneath the mountains between Lærdal and Aurland to give the Oslo–Bergen route a crossing that no winter could shut, replacing a high pass that snow closed for months at a time.
What makes it famous is what the engineers did about the psychology of twenty minutes underground. Working with SINTEF psychologists, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration split the bore into four stretches divided by three vast rock caverns at roughly six-kilometre intervals, each lit blue at the floor and yellow at the fringes to suggest a sunrise. Kilometre markers count down the distance remaining. From September 2026 the tunnel shuts overnight, between six in the evening and six in the morning, while a five-year refurbishment runs — it stays open to traffic through the day.
2. Tianshan Shengli Tunnel
At 22.13 km, the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel is the longest expressway tunnel anywhere and the newest giant on this list, opening to traffic on 26 December 2025. It runs beneath the central Tian Shan mountains in Xinjiang, carrying the G0711 expressway through a range that had previously forced traffic onto a long, weather-beaten mountain crossing.
The time saving is the headline: a journey that took several hours over the mountains now takes roughly twenty minutes underground. Chinese engineers drove it with two purpose-built tunnel boring machines working alongside conventional excavation, and finished the bore in a little over four years rather than the decade such a tunnel would normally demand. It sits at high altitude in seismically active country, which shaped both the ventilation design and the decision to use machines rather than blasting for much of the length.
3. Yamate Tunnel
At 18.20 km, the Yamate Tunnel is Japan's longest road tunnel and the only entry on this list that runs entirely beneath a city. It carries the Central Circular Route, the C2 ring of Tokyo's Shuto Expressway, under Yamate-dori from Toshima in the north down to the Ōi junction in Shinagawa.
Building it meant threading a motorway through the underside of one of the densest cities on Earth without disturbing what sits above. Work began in 1992 and roughly seventy per cent of the bore was driven by tunnelling shield rather than blasting, running about thirty metres below the surface. The final 9.4-kilometre stretch through Meguro and Shinagawa opened on 7 March 2015, completing the ring and taking a great deal of through traffic off the surface streets. Each of its twin tubes carries two lanes at a 60 km/h limit.
4. Zhongnanshan Tunnel
At 18.04 km, the Zhongnanshan Tunnel drives under the Qinling range, the mountain wall that divides northern China from the south. It opened on 20 January 2007 and carries the G65 expressway between Chang'an and Zhashui, cutting the Xi'an–Ankang journey through terrain that had previously demanded a slow, twisting climb.
The designers faced the same problem Norway had confronted at Lærdal: how to keep drivers alert through a quarter of an hour of unchanging concrete. Their answer was three special lighting zones, each 150 metres long, where lamps and projections throw blue sky, white cloud and rainbow across the vault to break the monotony. The tunnel runs as two separate bores carrying opposing traffic, and for years it stood as the longest two-tube road tunnel in the country.
5. Gotthard Road Tunnel
At 16.918 km, the Gotthard Road Tunnel is the best known crossing on this list and, unusually for a tunnel of its length, a single bore carrying traffic in both directions. It runs between Göschenen in Uri and Airolo in Ticino, taking the A2 motorway under the Alps on the main road route between northern Europe and Italy.
That single-bore layout is why the tunnel is famous for queues as much as for engineering: on peak holiday weekends the approach can back up for hours, and heavy vehicles are metered through in controlled groups. Switzerland is now addressing it. Tunnel boring machines started work on a second tube in February 2025 and broke into the northern fault-zone cavern in April 2026. The plan is for the new bore to carry traffic from 2030 while the original is refurbished, with both tubes in service from 2033.
6. Tiantaishan Tunnel
At 15.56 km, the Tiantaishan Tunnel carries the G85 expressway under the Qinling mountains south of Baoji in Shaanxi, on the stretch between Baoji and Pingkan. It broke through in December 2020 and opened to traffic on 30 September 2021, shortening the drive between Baoji and Hanzhong to about two hours.
It is unusual among Chinese long tunnels for its cross-section: six lanes carried across two separated bores, which makes the excavation volume exceptionally large for a road tunnel of this length. Because a quarter of an hour underground at 80 km/h invites the same driver fatigue Norway designed against, the tunnel was fitted with anti-fatigue lighting sections before it opened, using backlit panels to imitate open sky. It forms the centrepiece of a chain of ten tunnels running some 32 kilometres through the range.
7. Daliangshan No. 1 Tunnel
At 15.366 km, the Daliangshan No. 1 Tunnel is the longest expressway tunnel in south-western China. It runs beneath the Daliang Mountains on the border of Leibo and Meigu counties in Sichuan's Liangshan prefecture, carrying the S71 Leshan–Xichang expressway through country that had never had a motorway.
The bore was completed on 30 April 2025 and opened with the Mabian–Zhaojue section at the turn of 2026. It was the first extra-long Chinese expressway tunnel built with a combined method — a tunnel boring machine driving a parallel pilot heading while the main bores were excavated conventionally alongside — an approach adopted because the rock crosses several fault zones. The result cut the drive from Zhaojue to Chengdu to around three and a half hours and brought expressway access to three counties that had gone without it.
8. Muzhailing Tunnel
At 15.226 km, the Muzhailing Tunnel is the longest road tunnel in Gansu, opening to traffic on 31 January 2024 and completing the G75 expressway between Lanzhou and the south. It runs under the Muzhai ridge in the mountains of Dingxi, on the Weiyuan–Wudu stretch of the route.
Its reputation is for geology rather than length. The alignment crosses six folds and a dozen major fault zones, with a maximum depth of 629 metres, through rock that squeezes inward under pressure once opened — the kind of ground that closes a heading behind the diggers and deforms linings after installation. Construction began in May 2016 and the bore was not holed through until July 2023, more than seven years later. Engineers referred to the ridge as a forbidden zone for tunnelling long before the expressway reached it.
9. Zigana Tunnel
At 14.481 km, the Zigana Tunnel is the longest road tunnel in Turkey and among the longest twin-tube tunnels in Europe. It opened in May 2023 and carries the D.885 between Maçka and Torul, burrowing under the Zigana pass that links the Black Sea coast at Trabzon with the interior at Gümüşhane.
The pass it replaces sits high enough that snow and fog regularly interrupted a route that has carried trade between the coast and the interior for centuries. The tunnel takes eight kilometres off the journey and cuts about ten minutes from a car's crossing and roughly an hour from a heavy lorry's, in conditions that no longer depend on the weather. Its ventilation was the first in a Turkish road tunnel to use vertical shafts, with two stations drawing clean air down and drawing exhaust out.
10. Ryfylke Tunnel
At 14.4 km, the Ryfylke Tunnel is not only one of the longest road tunnels in the world but the longest and deepest subsea road tunnel anywhere, reaching 292 metres below sea level at its lowest point. It carries Route 13 beneath the Horgefjord between Stavanger and Strand in Rogaland, and opened on 30 December 2019.
It forms the main leg of the Ryfast project, which replaced a ferry crossing with a fixed link and tied Ryfylke directly into Stavanger, Norway's fourth-largest city. Going that deep under a fjord means gradients rather than a level run: traffic descends steeply for seven kilometres, passes the low point, then climbs the far side, a profile that dictates the tunnel's ventilation and its rules for heavy vehicles. It is a working commuter route rather than a scenic one.
11. Ovit Tunnel
At 14.346 km, the Ovit Tunnel runs beneath the Ovit pass in the Pontic Mountains, connecting İkizdere in Rize province with İspir in Erzurum. It opened on 13 June 2018 and carries the D.925, one of the few routes across the range between Turkey's Black Sea coast and its eastern highlands.
The pass above it climbs past 2,600 metres and spends a long stretch of each year under snow, which historically severed the connection between the coastal provinces and eastern Anatolia for months. The tunnel holds a steady altitude beneath all of that, giving the route a year-round crossing for the first time. It runs as twin bores, and along with the nearby Zigana it forms part of a wider programme of long tunnels that has reshaped how traffic moves through north-eastern Turkey.
12. Arlberg Road Tunnel
At 13.972 km, the Arlberg Road Tunnel is the longest road tunnel in Austria and one of the older crossings on this list, opening in 1978. It carries the S16 expressway under the Arlberg massif between Langen in Vorarlberg and St. Anton in Tyrol, and remains a toll route — the alternative being the Arlberg Pass over the top.
Like the Gotthard it is a single bore carrying both directions, which is what has driven its recent history. ASFINAG closed it completely from April 2024 for the first full renewal of its roadway since it was built, alongside new drainage and a rebuilt toll plaza at St. Jakob, and reopened it on schedule on 22 November 2024. Around nine thousand vehicles use it daily, and with the tunnel in service the crossing saves roughly half an hour over the pass.
13. Micangshan Tunnel
At 13.833 km through its longer bore, the Micangshan Tunnel crosses the Micang Mountains on the border between Sichuan and Shaanxi, carrying the G85 expressway on the Bazhong–Shaanxi stretch. Its two tubes are not quite matched: the left runs 13,833 metres and the right 13,792, a difference of some forty metres that reflects the separate alignments each bore had to follow.
The Micang range is the historic barrier between the Sichuan basin and the Han river valley to the north, crossed for centuries by plank roads cut into cliff faces. Construction started in 2013 and the tunnel opened in 2018, replacing a mountain route with a straight run at expressway speed. It sits in the same band of northern Sichuan as several of China's other extra-long tunnels, a consequence of building motorways across a province ringed almost entirely by mountains.
14. Dabashan Tunnel
At 13.715 km, the Dabashan Tunnel carries the G69 expressway under the Daba Mountains, running from Zhanghepin in Lan'gao county in Shaanxi south to Kucaoping in Chengkou county in Chongqing. It opened to traffic on 25 December 2025 as part of the section that completed the expressway across the Shaanxi–Chongqing border.
Its effect on the journey is dramatic even by the standards of this list: the drive from Chengkou to Ankang fell from around 140 minutes to roughly 40. The Daba range is remote, steep and thinly populated, and Chengkou county had long been among the harder places in Chongqing to reach by road. The tunnel is a twin-bore, four-lane crossing, and its completion linked a stretch of expressway that had been built from both ends and left waiting on the mountain in between.
15. Xishan Tunnel
At 13.654 km through its longer bore, the Xishan Tunnel completes this countdown, carrying the S56 expressway west out of Taiyuan towards Gujiao in Shanxi. It opened in 2012, and like several Chinese tunnels of its generation its two tubes differ slightly in length, the left running 13,654 metres and the right 13,570.
The Xishan hills it passes under are coal country, worked for generations and honeycombed accordingly, which made the alignment as much a question of avoiding old workings as of driving through rock. The tunnel connects the Shanxi capital with the mining district to its west and was, when it opened, the longest road tunnel in the province. That it now sits fifteenth on a global list — while being long enough to have held a national record — is a fair measure of how much has been bored since.
FAQ: The World's Longest Road Tunnels
What is the longest road tunnel in the world?
Norway's Lærdal Tunnel, at 24.51 km, has held the record since it opened in 2000. It runs between Lærdal and Aurland on the E16 and takes about twenty minutes to drive at the 80 km/h speed limit. Norway's own Rogfast tunnel will overtake it when it opens.
Why isn't the Channel Tunnel on this list?
Because it carries trains rather than cars. At 50.5 km the Channel Tunnel is roughly twice the length of the longest road tunnel, and the Gotthard Base Tunnel is longer still at 57.1 km, but neither admits private vehicles — cars cross the Channel loaded onto shuttle trains.
What is the longest undersea road tunnel?
Norway's Ryfylke Tunnel, tenth on this list at 14.4 km. It carries Route 13 beneath the Horgefjord between Stavanger and Strand, and reaches 292 metres below sea level at its lowest point, which makes it the deepest subsea road tunnel anywhere as well as the longest.
Which country has the most of the world's longest road tunnels?
China, by a wide margin — eight of these fifteen are Chinese, and its share grows further down the rankings. Three of the eight opened within the last two years, reflecting a sustained programme of driving expressways through the mountainous west and south-west of the country.
Is the ranking about to change?
Yes. Norway is boring Rogfast, a 26.7 km subsea tunnel on the E39 that will become both the longest and the deepest road tunnel in the world when it opens, currently planned for 2033. It descends to 392 metres below sea level and includes two undersea roundabouts.
Planning more of your trip? Keep exploring more world record-breakers.