Definition
A landlocked country is a country completely surrounded by the land of other countries, with no coastline touching the sea. More than 40 countries in the world are landlocked, and to reach the ocean they must pass through a neighbor's land or airspace.
The Trouble With Having No Door to the Sea
Most of the goods we buy at the store, and most of the goods countries sell abroad, travel by sea on giant cargo ships. Shipping by sea is the cheapest way to move far more cargo than a plane or a train can carry.
But a landlocked country has no port of its own, so it can't send goods straight to the ocean. To export or import anything, it has to load trucks or trains, cross a neighbor's border, and rent space at that neighbor's port. Every border crossing means customs checks and fees, so shipping gets a lot more expensive and slow.
Because it doesn't touch the sea, a landlocked country sits in a disadvantaged position on shipping costs and time. It also faces a serious risk: if relations with a neighbor sour or a conflict breaks out, the border can close and block its trade routes completely.
To Be More Precise: The Right to Reach the Sea
So if a neighbor blocks the road, is a landlocked country shut out of the sea for good? Fortunately, no. International law (the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) recognizes the right of access to the sea and freedom of transit as basic rights, so landlocked countries can use the high seas (shared waters that belong to no country).
To be more precise, a neighbor with a coastline must not block a landlocked country's transit cargo without a good reason. A landlocked country can also sail ships under its own flag on the high seas, and it has the same rights to lay communication cables and catch fish there.
Some landlocked countries are even more unusual. They are doubly landlocked: every neighbor around them is landlocked too. There are only two in the whole world, Liechtenstein in Europe and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. To reach the sea, these countries have to cross at least two borders.
How Some Countries Thrive Without a Coast
Being landlocked is a disadvantage, but that doesn't mean every landlocked country is poor. Switzerland, Austria, and Luxembourg have no coast, yet they rank among the richest countries in the world.
Some, like Luxembourg, grew first on steelmaking and later switched to finance. Others, like Switzerland, are strong in precision machinery and medicine. Today, these economies are driven by high-value knowledge industries: small, valuable goods such as precision machines and drugs, plus finance and software. Small goods can be flown out quickly, and finance and software can be traded over the internet without caring about borders.
In the end, being landlocked is a big challenge for shipping and security, and many of the world's landlocked countries have been slow to develop. Still, these examples show that cooperation with neighbors and a smart industrial strategy can overcome it.
Common misconceptions
A landlocked country has no sea, so it can't have a navy at all.
Some landlocked countries run a navy or a water patrol to guard huge lakes or rivers along their borders. Bolivia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan are well-known examples.
Where you meet it
Switzerland and Austria in Europe have no coastline, but the Alps and the railway networks of nearby countries have made them a hub of European shipping.
Bolivia in South America lost its land access to the sea in a past war and became landlocked.
In one sentence
A landlocked country is blocked by land on every side with no sea, and it works to ease that geographic limit through transit rights and smart industrial strategy.