Fuji, Etna, Kilimanjaro — none of them come close. Every volcano on this list stands above 6,000 metres, and all fifteen rise from the same stretch of the high Andes around the Atacama, where they begin from a plateau already close to 4,000 metres and get so little rainfall that the glaciers which would grind them back down never form. We rank them one way only: summit elevation above sea level, from 6,893 metres down to 6,046. And we count a mountain as a volcano only if the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program records it erupting within the last 11,700 years — a volcano that could, in principle, wake again. That second rule costs the list its two most tempting entries. Monte Pissis (6,793 m) and Cerro Bonete Chico (6,759 m) would both rank near the top on height alone, but each fell quiet millions of years ago, and neither appears in the Smithsonian's register at all.
15 Tallest Volcanoes in the World (2026)
The record The tallest volcano in the world is Nevados Ojos del Salado, in Chile and Argentina — 6,893 m (22,615 ft), summit elevation above sea level. Source: Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program (Volcanoes of the World) + national survey figures. Verified .
Tallest Volcanoes in the World The Ranking at a Glance
Fun Facts About the World's Tallest Volcanoes
- Every volcano on this list is in the Andes. The tallest volcano outside South America that still counts as active or dormant is Damavand in Iran, at 5,670 m — nowhere near this countdown.
- The desert is why they are so tall. The Atacama is so dry that almost no glacial ice forms on these summits, so there is nothing to grind the cones back down as they grow.
- Being taller is not enough to qualify. Monte Pissis (6,793 m) and Cerro Bonete Chico (6,759 m) both out-top all but one entry here, but neither has erupted in millions of years and neither appears in the Smithsonian's volcano register at all.
- Only two have been seen erupting. Just Llullaillaco in 1877 and Guallatiri in 1960 have a confirmed eruption witnessed in historical times; the rest are dated by their deposits.
- The highest archaeological site on Earth sits near one summit. Three Inca children were recovered from a shrine just below the top of Llullaillaco in 1999.
- One summit is further from the centre of the Earth than Everest. Because the planet bulges at the equator, the top of Chimborazo is the most distant point on the surface from the Earth's core.
1. Nevados Ojos del Salado
At 6,893 m, Nevados Ojos del Salado is the highest volcano on Earth and the second-highest peak anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, beaten only by Aconcagua. It straddles the Chile–Argentina border in the driest corner of the Atacama, and that dryness is part of the reason it stands so tall: with so little snowfall, almost no glacial ice forms to carve the summit down, so the cone keeps the height its eruptions built.
It is dormant rather than dead. Tephra from its last known eruption has been dated to roughly 750 CE, and fumaroles still vent steam near the top. The extreme aridity also makes it an unusually approachable giant — the standard route is a long, thin-aired walk rather than a technical climb, which is why it draws altitude-hungry trekkers rather than alpinists.
2. Llullaillaco
Llullaillaco reaches 6,739 m on the Chile–Argentina frontier, and unlike almost everything else on this list it has erupted within recorded history. Its last confirmed eruption came in 1877, which makes it the highest volcano on the planet known to have erupted in historical times — an active volcano in the fullest sense of the word.
It is also the site of one of archaeology's most remarkable finds. In 1999 three Inca children, sacrificed around five centuries ago and preserved by the cold and the altitude, were recovered from a shrine near the summit. The site sits higher than any other archaeological excavation in the world, and the discovery is why Llullaillaco is far better known to historians than to climbers.
3. Tipas
Tipas rises to an official 6,658 m in Catamarca Province, Argentina, just southwest of Ojos del Salado — close enough that the two are often confused. It causes trouble in another way too: the same mountain appears in the literature as Cerro Walther Penck and as Cerro Cazadero, so lists that treat those as separate peaks end up counting one volcano three times.
Rather than a single cone, Tipas is a sprawling complex of stratovolcanoes, lava domes and flows spread across a wide area. Its exact height is genuinely uncertain — different digital elevation models put it anywhere between about 6,627 m and 6,699 m. Crater lakes reported near the summit carried a smell of sulphur, a sign the system still has some heat left in it.
4. Nevado de Incahuasi
Nevado de Incahuasi tops out at 6,621 m on the border between Argentina's Catamarca Province and Chile's Atacama Region, a broad stratovolcano capped by a summit caldera. Its name comes from Quechua and means roughly "house of the Inca", and the mountain carries Inca remains high on its slopes — these high volcanoes were sacred ground long before they were survey points.
Its status is the most debatable on this list. Radiometric dating suggests the volcano stopped erupting long ago, yet its eruption products look young enough that the Smithsonian keeps it in the Holocene catalogue with the evidence graded as uncertain, and fumarolic activity has been reported. It earns its place here on that register, but it is the entry most likely to be reclassified.
5. Cerro El Cóndor
Cerro El Cóndor stands at 6,414 m in Catamarca Province, Argentina, a large stratovolcano in one of the emptiest parts of the Puna de Atacama. There is no road to its base worth the name and no settlement within sight of it, which is a large part of why a volcano this size remains so little known outside specialist literature.
Its ranking is the one genuinely contested position in this countdown. The widely cited survey figure of 6,414 m places it fifth, but the Smithsonian's own catalogue records 6,373 m, which would drop it just below Coropuna into sixth. Dating of its younger cone points to activity within the last few tens of thousands of years, and eruptions in the summit region during the Holocene are considered possible.
6. Nevado Coropuna
Nevado Coropuna reaches 6,377 m in Peru's Arequipa Region, and it breaks the pattern of this list in one respect: it lies far north of the Atacama and wears a substantial ice cap. Several summits rise from a single broad volcanic complex, and the glaciers draped over them feed rivers that supply communities across the surrounding valleys.
Coropuna was among the most sacred mountains in the Inca world, and archaeological sites ring its lower slopes. It also remains a Holocene volcano by any measure — young-looking lava flows have been dated to roughly 6,000, 2,100 and around 1,000 years ago. Today its activity shows itself as hot springs rather than eruptions, and the volcano is classed as dormant rather than extinct.
7. Parinacota
Parinacota rises to 6,348 m on the Chile–Bolivia border and is, by some distance, the most photographed volcano on this list. Its cone is almost perfectly symmetrical, and it stands beside its twin, Pomerape — together the pair are known as the Payachata. The view across Lake Chungará to the two cones is one of the defining images of the Chilean altiplano.
That symmetry is young. An earlier version of the volcano collapsed catastrophically several thousand years ago, and the debris left behind dammed the drainage to create the Cotacotani lakes scattered across the plain below. The cone visible today was rebuilt on top of that scar. Aymara tradition recalls activity around 1800, and dated deposits confirm eruptions well within the Holocene.
8. Chimborazo
At 6,263 m Chimborazo is the highest mountain in Ecuador, but its real claim is stranger than height. Because the Earth bulges at the equator and Chimborazo sits almost on it, the volcano's summit is the point on the planet's surface furthest from the centre of the Earth — some two kilometres further out than the top of Everest.
That quirk made it a magnet for nineteenth-century science. Alexander von Humboldt attempted the mountain in 1802 and, though a crevasse stopped him short of the top, reached a greater height than any European had then recorded — the Inca, as the shrines on these summits show, had gone higher centuries earlier. The volcano itself is dormant: its last eruption has been dated to around 550 CE, and its glaciers, though much reduced, still supply ice to the communities below.
9. Pular
Pular reaches 6,233 m in Chile's Antofagasta Region, a broad massif of overlapping stratovolcanoes rather than a single peak, set deep in the Atacama east of the Salar de Atacama. Most of the mountain was built before the Holocene began, and the Smithsonian grades the evidence for any recent eruption as uncertain.
What it does show is heat. Solfataras vent sulphurous gas on the mountain and thermal anomalies have been recorded, though reports of an eruption in 1990 are contradictory and none has ever been confirmed. Like many of the great Atacama volcanoes, Pular carries Inca ceremonial remains near its summit, placed by people who climbed above 6,000 m without any of the equipment a modern expedition would consider essential.
10. Cerro El Solo
Cerro El Solo tops out at 6,215 m immediately west of Ojos del Salado, on the Chile–Argentina border between Catamarca and Copiapó. Despite the name — "the lone one" — it is anything but solitary in construction: the mountain is built from nine separate eruptive centres that have grown together into one large stratovolcano.
It sits in the densest cluster of 6,000-metre volcanoes anywhere on Earth, sharing a horizon with Ojos del Salado, Tipas and Nevado de Incahuasi. No eruption has been dated, and the Smithsonian records its Holocene evidence as credible rather than confirmed. For climbers it tends to be an acclimatisation objective on the way to its far more famous neighbour rather than a destination in itself.
11. Sierra Nevada de Lagunas Bravas
Sierra Nevada de Lagunas Bravas reaches 6,137 m astride the Chile–Argentina border in the Puna de Atacama. The name refers to the string of harsh, brackish lagoons scattered across the plateau at its foot, and the volcano itself is less a peak than a long, high ridge — a stratovolcano fused with a complex of ignimbrite sheets and lava domes.
It is among the least visited mountains of its size anywhere. Dating of its rocks spans a long history, from roughly 1.7 million years ago through to a neighbouring lava flow around 140,000 years old, and no eruption has been dated within recorded time. The Smithsonian holds it in the Holocene catalogue on credible evidence, which keeps it inside this list's membership rule.
12. Aracar
Aracar rises to 6,095 m in Salta Province, Argentina, a large, isolated stratovolcano with a summit crater, standing above the salt flats and empty gravel plains of the western Puna. Like its neighbours it carries archaeological remains near the top, part of the network of high-altitude Inca sites that runs the length of these mountains.
Its only observed activity is a single ambiguous event. On 28 March 1993 a plume — steam, possibly carrying ash — was seen rising from the volcano by observers in the village of Tolar Grande, roughly 50 km to the southeast. Nothing was confirmed on the ground, and no eruption has been verified since. That lone sighting is the entire modern activity record for a mountain of more than 6,000 m.
13. Guallatiri
Guallatiri stands at 6,071 m in Chile's Arica y Parinacota Region, and it is the most demonstrably alive volcano on this list. Its last eruption came in 1960, well within living memory, and it maintains vigorous fumarolic activity that sends a persistent plume from near the summit, visible from a considerable distance across the altiplano.
That combination makes it one of the most closely watched volcanoes in northern Chile. It sits near the southern end of the same volcanic chain that includes Parinacota, within reach of the villages of the Chilean altiplano, and its record of historical eruptions means it is treated as a genuine hazard rather than a geological curiosity. Snow and ice cover its upper slopes despite the surrounding desert.
14. Socompa
Socompa reaches 6,051 m on the Chile–Argentina border, and it is famous less for its height than for the shape of the ground around it. Roughly 7,200 years ago a huge section of the volcano's northwestern flank gave way in a single catastrophic collapse, sending a debris avalanche racing across the desert floor and leaving a deposit that covers hundreds of square kilometres.
Because the Atacama erodes so slowly, that deposit is one of the best-preserved landslide features on Earth, and it has been studied as an analogue for similar structures on Mars. The volcano rebuilt a cone inside the collapse scar afterwards, and the Smithsonian dates its most recent eruption to about 5250 BCE. High-altitude Inca remains sit near the summit.
15. Acamarachi
Acamarachi closes the list at 6,046 m in Chile's Antofagasta Region, east of the Salar de Atacama. Also known as Cerro Pili, it is one of the steepest volcanoes in the Andes — an unusually sharp, conical peak in a landscape mostly built from broad shields and sprawling complexes, and a landmark visible from much of the surrounding desert.
A small lake just a few metres across sits in its summit crater, among the highest bodies of water anywhere, and an Inca altar was found near the top in 1971. Some lava near the summit crater appears to post-date the last glaciation, which is what keeps the volcano in the Holocene catalogue, though no eruption has been dated and none has been observed in historical times.
FAQ: The World's Tallest Volcanoes
What is the tallest volcano in the world?
Nevados Ojos del Salado, on the Chile–Argentina border, at 6,893 m. It is the highest volcano on Earth and the second-highest mountain anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, behind only Aconcagua. It is dormant rather than dead: its last known eruption is dated to around 750 CE, and fumaroles still vent steam near the summit.
Why are all the tallest volcanoes in South America?
Two reasons compound. These volcanoes grow on the Altiplano-Puna plateau, whose crust is roughly 70 km thick and whose surface already averages well above 3,500 m, so they start high. And the Atacama is so arid that the glaciers which carve down big volcanoes elsewhere barely form here.
Are the world's tallest volcanoes still active?
All fifteen qualify as active or dormant rather than extinct, but only two have been watched erupting: Llullaillaco in 1877 and Guallatiri in 1960. The rest are dated from their deposits. Several, including Ojos del Salado and Guallatiri, still vent steam and sulphurous gas from summit fumaroles.
Why isn't Monte Pissis on this list?
Because it stopped being a working volcano long ago. Monte Pissis reaches 6,793 m, which would place it second, and Cerro Bonete Chico at 6,759 m would place it third. But both fell silent millions of years ago, and neither appears in the Smithsonian's volcano catalogue at all. This list counts only volcanoes that erupted within the last 11,700 years.
Can you climb the world's tallest volcanoes?
Several are climbed regularly. Ojos del Salado is the best known, and because the Atacama is so dry its normal route is a long, high walk rather than a technical ascent — altitude, not difficulty, is the obstacle. Others here, such as Cerro El Cóndor and Sierra Nevada de Lagunas Bravas, are remote enough to see very few visitors.
Planning more of your trip? Keep exploring more world record-breakers.