Countries with the largest forest area

Countries with the largest forest area is a live ranking of the top 50 entries in environment and energy by Forest area, built from public data published by World Bank Open Data. It was last refreshed on 2026-11-02. This is the first published snapshot; from the next refresh onwards the page will also show movers, new entries and a rank history chart.

Russian Federation currently holds #1 with 8,326.3 thousand sq. km. Brazil is second with 4,860.87 thousand sq. km, which puts the leader 71% ahead. Canada completes the top three with 3,688.19 thousand sq. km. Together the top three account for about 62% of the combined top-10 total, which gives a quick sense of how concentrated this ranking is.

How it is measured: Land under natural or planted stands of trees of at least 5 meters, whether productive or not, excluding tree stands in farming systems and urban parks and gardens. World Bank indicator AG.LND.FRST.K2; most recent year available per country, regional and income aggregates excluded. Caveat: Countries report in different years; each shows its latest available figure. Source: World Bank Open Data (CC BY 4.0). The full top 50 is on this page, with positions 11 to 50 one click away, and each entry links to its own profile showing every ranking it appears in.

Use this page to check who is number one right now, compare any two entries head to head, or test yourself with the quiz, which asks you to name all ten in three minutes. Year-end archives are available for 2026, freezing the ranking as it stood at the close of each year. Top10Earth never estimates or edits a value: each number is fetched from its source, hashed, stored and ranked by software, then checked by a quality gate before it is published. If a refresh fails the gate, the previous snapshot stays live and the problem is reviewed by a person.