Top 10 Deepest Caves in the World

Ask which cave is the deepest in the world and you will get two confident answers that contradict each other. The list cavers have treated as the record book for fifty years, started by Bob Gulden in 1976 and now maintained for the National Speleological Society, puts Veryovkina Cave at 2,212 m (7,257 ft) and Krubera-Voronya second at 2,199 m. Wikipedia, and every listicle copied from it this year, puts Krubera first at 2,224 m and Veryovkina second at 2,209 m. Nobody disputes the limestone; only where the tape measure should start and stop.

Both caves plunge from the same plateau in Abkhazia, and either figure makes them deeper than Lake Baikal, which tops our ranking of the deepest lakes in the world at 1,642 m. A caver who reaches the bottom of Veryovkina has descended the height of seven stacked Eiffel Towers, over four days, past an underground river running at 500 liters per second.

This list ranks the ten deepest caves by surveyed vertical depth and does what most rankings refuse to do: where the two authoritative sources disagree, it prints both numbers and explains why. It also separates three records that are routinely muddled: deepest cave, longest cave and deepest single drop. Each belongs to a different cave on a different continent.

Methodology

Every entry is ranked by vertical depth: the elevation difference between a cave system's highest entrance and its lowest explored point, including sumps that divers have penetrated. This is the standard of the NSS World Deepest Caves list at cave-exploring.com, the successor to Bob Gulden's caverbob.com database. Gulden kept that list from 1976 until his death in November 2022; Paul Burger now compiles it, and it was last updated on 3 October 2026, five days before this article. Its order is our order.

We cross-checked every figure against the explorers' own reports and national bodies: the Verband Österreichischer Höhlenforscher list "Die tiefsten Höhlen Österreichs" for Austria, the Collectif Mirolda and Groupe Vulcain surveys for France, Perovo-Speleo expedition reports for Veryovkina, and the Proyecto Espeleológico Sistema Huautla for Mexico. Where a newer survey gives a different number, it appears in the entry and in the summary table as a challenger figure. The NSS list applies one consistent standard and admits only published data; it is also slower to adopt new claims than the teams making them. That lag is the entire reason the top two are in dispute.

Two things are deliberately excluded. Length is a different record: Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is the longest known cave on Earth at 426 miles (686 km) of surveyed passage, announced by the National Park Service in September 2022, yet it is a shallow horizontal maze. Single vertical drop is a third record: Vrtiglavica in Slovenia holds the deepest known unbroken pitch at 603 m (1,978 ft), in a cave only 643 m deep in total. The caves below are staircases of hundreds of pitches that take days to descend and days to climb back out of.

List of the Deepest Caves in the World

10. Hirlatzhöhle (Austria)

The Hirlatz cave in the Dachstein massif above Hallstatt was discovered in 1949 and has absorbed more than 18,000 hours of exploration by the local caving club. The system runs from the level of Lake Hallstatt to roughly 1,600 m above it, with six entrances, three usable only by divers, and more than 115 km of surveyed passage, making it one of Europe's longest caves as well as one of its deepest. Its depth of 1,559 m (5,115 ft) places it tenth on the NSS list, one meter behind Sistema Huautla; Wikipedia rounds it to 1,560 m and calls the two a tie.

Depth: 1,559 m (5,115 ft), Dachstein, Upper Austria. Discovered 1949.

9. Sistema Huautla (Mexico)

Sistema Huautla in the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca is the deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere and the only entry outside Europe and the Caucasus. Cavers from Austin, Texas, found the first big entrances in 1965, and six decades of expeditions have linked around 30 entrances into one system. A 2013 push fixed the current depth at 1,560 m (5,118 ft); since 2014 the annual PESH expeditions have chased length instead, passing 100 km (62 miles) of surveyed passage by May 2024.

Huautla's neighbor Sistema Chevé is the cave to watch: surveyed to only 1,529 m as of 2023, but with a dye trace from its entrance to a resurgence 2,547 m lower, the greatest proven depth potential on Earth. A dive of its terminal sump was planned for spring 2026; neither list had changed its figure at the time of writing.

Depth: 1,560 m (5,118 ft), Sierra Mazateca, Oaxaca. Length 100.2 km as of May 2024.

8. Torca del Cerro del Cuevón (Spain)

Spain's deepest cave drops through the central massif of the Picos de Europa in Cabrales, Asturias, from an entrance cavers call T-33 at 2,019 m above sea level. It is really two connected shafts, the Cuevón and the Torca de las Saxifragas (TR-2), whose lower entrance sits at 1,590 m. A Franco-Spanish team reached the bottom for the first time in 1998, establishing a depth of 1,589 m (5,213 ft) that has not moved since and on which every source agrees. The descent takes three days. The same small range also holds Sistema del Trave (1,441 m) and Sima de la Cornisa (1,507 m), three top-fifteen caves from a region a fraction the size of the Caucasus.

Depth: 1,589 m (5,213 ft), Picos de Europa, Asturias. Bottom reached 1998.

7. Réseau Jean-Bernard (France)

The Jean-Bernard network above Samoëns in Haute-Savoie was the deepest known cave in the world for almost two decades, from July 1979, when the Lyon club Groupe Vulcain connected the B21 shaft, until January 1998. It is named after Jean Dupont and Bernard Raffy, two Vulcain members who died in 1963, the year the first entrance was found. The system has about 13 entrances, the highest at 2,333 m, and 29.6 km of passage. Its depth shows why this list prints two figures: the NSS list carries 1,625 m (5,256 ft), Wikipedia 1,612 m, older references 1,602 m. None reflects new exploration, only re-surveys of the same passages and differing choices about which entrance counts as the top.

Depth: 1,625 m (5,256 ft) NSS list; 1,612 m Wikipedia. Samoëns, Haute-Savoie. World's deepest 1979-1998.

6. Lamprechtsofen (Austria)

Lamprechtsofen is the odd one out: a cave explored mostly upward. Its lowest entrance, at only 664 m above sea level near Weißbach bei Lofer in Salzburg, is a show cave where tourists walk 700 m of lit passage. Above it the Leogang Mountains rise more than a kilometer, and for 24 years Polish cavers from the Kraków club KKTJ, led by Andrzej Ciszewski, worked through the mountain from top and bottom at once. On 19 August 1998 they linked the high PL-2 shaft into the system and, at 1,632 m, Lamprechtsofen became the deepest cave in the world, until Krubera overtook it in January 2001.

The current figure is disputed by eight meters: the Austrian federation's list (Pfarr, Seebacher and Plan) and the NSS list both give 1,727 m (5,666 ft), while the Polish team's August 2018 connection of the CL-3 shaft was announced at 1,735 m. With 51 km of passage, it is Austria's deepest cave under either number.

Depth: 1,727 m (5,666 ft) Austrian and NSS lists; 1,735 m Polish 2018 claim. Leogang Mountains, Salzburg. World's deepest 1998-2001.

5. Gouffre Mirolda / Lucien Bouclier (France)

A shepherd named Marc Degrinis found the entrance to Mirolda above Samoëns in 1971, a few kilometers from Jean-Bernard. Three decades of exploration ended with a dive of the terminal sump in January 2003 that took the system to 1,733 m (5,686 ft) and made it the deepest cave in the world for eighteen months, until Krubera passed 2,000 m. The system has 22 km of passage and a highest entrance at 2,330 m.

Then the number collapsed. In September 2022 and 2023 the Collectif Mirolda re-surveyed the cave with modern instruments and reported 1,661 m, a loss of 72 m without a single passage being lost. The NSS list still carries 1,733 m; by the new figure Mirolda would drop below Lamprechtsofen.

Depth: 1,733 m (5,686 ft) NSS list; 1,661 m after 2022-2023 re-survey. Samoëns, Haute-Savoie. World's deepest 2003-2004.

4. Illyuzia-Mezhonnogo-Snezhnaya (Abkhazia)

Here the list leaves the Alps for the Caucasus and does not come back. Snezhnaya, "Snowy," was found on 9 August 1971 by Moscow State University cavers Tatyana Guzhvova and Vladimir Glebov, its entrance plugged by a permanent snow cone. It is the only Abkhazian cave in the top four that is not on the Arabika Massif: it lies on the Khipsta massif of the Bzyb Range to the east, a detail many rankings get wrong. Five caves, Snezhnaya, Mezhennogo, Illyuzia, Na Banke and Fantaziya, have been joined into one system with 40.8 km of passage, listed on Wikipedia under its Georgian name, Tovliani.

Its depth of 1,760 m (5,774 ft) dates from January 2011, when diver Dmitry Khodykin pushed through Lake Morozova at the bottom on an expedition led by Andrey Shuvalov, who would later be at the lowest camp in Veryovkina during the 2018 flood.

Depth: 1,760 m (5,774 ft), Bzyb Range, Abkhazia. Discovered 1971; current depth 2011.

3. Sarma (Abkhazia)

Sarma was discovered in 1990 by Sergey Shipitsin on an expedition of the Arabika caving club from Irkutsk led by Alexander Osintsev, which means the third-deepest cave on Earth was found and explored largely by cavers from Siberia. It lies on the Arabika Massif in the Gagra district, the same plateau as Krubera and Veryovkina, and its depth of 1,830 m (6,004 ft) was fixed in 2012 by a team under Pavel Rudko. The figure is undisputed: the NSS list and Wikipedia agree to the meter.

Sarma matters for what it says about Arabika: a massif holding the world's two deepest caves also holds a third deeper than anything outside the Caucasus, plus Pantyukhin at 1,508 m. Its lower levels are home to two species of blind stygobiont amphipods living more than a kilometer below the surface.

Depth: 1,830 m (6,004 ft), Arabika Massif, Abkhazia. Discovered 1990; depth measured 2012.

2. Krubera-Voronya (Abkhazia)

Krubera opens at 2,256 m above sea level in the Ortobalagan Valley of Arabika, a pit Georgian speleologists named after the Russian geographer Alexander Kruber when they explored it to 57 m in 1960; Ukrainian cavers who reopened it later called it Voronya, "Crows' Cave," after the birds nesting in the entrance shaft. In 2001 the Ukrainian Speleological Association reached 1,710 m and took the world record out of Western Europe for the first time. In 2004 the project passed 2,000 m, the first cave ever to do so, and in 2007 and again in August 2012 cave diver Gennadiy Samokhin swam the terminal sump to set the mark at 2,199 m (7,215 ft).

That figure stood for a decade and is still the one on the NSS list. In August 2024 a Russian team re-surveyed the entire cave and dived the bottom sump again, reporting 2,224 m, which Wikipedia adopted and which would make Krubera the deepest cave on Earth once more. The claim rests on expedition reports and regional news coverage rather than a published survey, and the NSS compiler has not yet accepted it. Until that changes, Krubera is second by 13 m on the record book and first by 15 m on the internet.

Depth: 2,199 m (7,215 ft) NSS list; 2,224 m claimed after August 2024 re-survey. Arabika Massif, Abkhazia. First cave past 2,000 m (2004).

1. Veryovkina (Abkhazia)

Veryovkina's entrance is a hole 3 m by 4 m at 2,285 m above sea level, found by Krasnoyarsk cavers in 1968 and catalogued as S-115 for the depth at which they stopped. It was renamed in 1986 for Alexander Verevkin, a cave diver who died in 1983, and for three decades it was a footnote. Then the Moscow club Perovo-Speleo, led by Pavel Demidov, found a new shaft in August 2015 and the cave did not stop: 630 m in June 2016, 1,010 m that August, 1,350 m in October, 1,832 m by February 2017. In August 2017 the team hit an underground river and two terminal siphons at 2,204 m, taking the world record from Krubera and winning the UIS prize for the year's most significant exploration. A March 2018 expedition set the depth at 2,212 m (7,257 ft).

On 16 September 2018, eight cavers were at the lowest camp, about 2,100 m down, on the eleventh day of a photography expedition with National Geographic's Robbie Shone. Two teammates who had climbed to the 1,300 m camp tapped into the wire telephone line strung down the cave and sent a warning: after a week of rain on the surface, a flood pulse was coming, and it would arrive in 30 minutes. It came as a wall of white water that shook the cave like a freight train. The team abandoned tents and gear and climbed vertical ropes through what had become a waterfall, then sat in a refuge at 1,900 m for 16 hours while the pulse ran for nearly 20. Demidov, the last man off the ropes, was nearly pulled into an eddy swimming to them. All eight survived; the climb to daylight took four days. Demidov later went back for Shone's camera. It was ruined.

The record is now in question from an unexpected direction: the explorers themselves. In August 2023 Perovo-Speleo flew an underwater drone into the bottom sump and reported 2,223 m. In August 2024 they tied the sump to the Blue Lake on the surface, with which the cave's river was already proven to connect, using a high-precision GNSS receiver, and revised the depth down to 2,209 m, the last 26 m underwater. The NSS list still shows 2,212 m and still ranks Veryovkina first; by the teams' own 2024 figures it is second to Krubera by 15 m. By any figure it is one of only two caves on Earth deeper than two kilometers, and one that has cost a life: Sergei Kozeev, descending alone in November 2020, died of hypothermia at 1,100 m; his body was recovered on 17 August 2021.

Depth: 2,212 m (7,257 ft) NSS list; 2,209 m by Perovo-Speleo's 2024 GNSS survey. Arabika Massif, Abkhazia. World record since 2017 (disputed since 2024).

Summary of the Top 10 Deepest Caves in the World

Why Arabika Dominates, and Why the Numbers Keep Moving

Read the table from the top and one plateau in a breakaway region on the Black Sea accounts for the three deepest caves on Earth, with a fourth Abkhazian cave in fourth place. This is geology meeting plumbing. The Arabika Massif is a block of Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous limestone whose summits reach 2,656 m, while its springs sit at sea level less than 16 km away. Water that falls on the plateau has 2,500 m of soluble rock to fall through and nowhere to go but down; no other karst range, not even those beneath the tallest mountains in the world, has yet yielded a cave through that much rock. Dye traces in the 1980s proved it: tracer injected on the plateau emerged at the Reprua and Kholodnaya Rechka springs on the Black Sea coast 13 to 16 km away, a karst system with a vertical range of roughly 2,500 to 2,700 m. Every cave on Arabika is a partially explored piece of that single drain, and Krubera and Veryovkina are simply the two places where cavers have followed it furthest.

The second pattern is that depth is a survey, not a fact. Four of the ten entries carry two figures, and only one disagreement comes from new exploration; the rest come from re-measuring passages known for decades. Mirolda lost 72 m without losing a meter of cave. Veryovkina lost 3 m to a satellite receiver. Krubera gained 25 m from a repeat survey of the same shafts. A cave survey is a chain of thousands of compass, clinometer and tape readings, and over 2,000 vertical meters the small errors do not cancel; they accumulate. The NSS list's refusal to adopt a claim until it is published is slow, but it is why the list has been trusted for fifty years.

That answers the opening question. Veryovkina is first on the record book cavers use. Krubera is first by the most recent measurements, which the record book has not yet adopted. Neither cave is fully explored, both end in sumps divers have only partly pushed, and 15 m either way is well within what the next expedition could change. Anyone who tells you flatly that one is the deepest cave on Earth has picked a source without telling you.

What Most Rankings Get Wrong

The commonest error is confusing three different records. Deepest is vertical range: the caves above. Longest is total surveyed passage: Mammoth Cave's 426 miles, a labyrinth under Kentucky shallow enough to tour in sneakers. Deepest single drop is one unbroken pitch: Vrtiglavica's 603 m shaft in Slovenia, in a cave that does not reach 650 m overall. A supercave is hundreds of modest pitches stacked up, which is why reaching the bottom of Veryovkina takes four days of camping in air a few degrees above freezing, closer in feel to the coldest places on Earth than to the sunlit Caucasus above.

The second error is counting Snezhnaya as an Arabika cave. It is 1,760 m deep and in Abkhazia, but it lies on the Bzyb Range to the east. Arabika has three of the top ten, not four, and the distinction matters because the Bzyb and Khipsta massifs, with their own drainage to the coast, are where many speleologists expect the next two-kilometer cave.

The third is treating this list as finished. Chevé in Mexico has 2,547 m of proven vertical potential and a terminal sump scheduled for a 2026 dive. Boybuloq in Uzbekistan was 1,430 m deep on the NSS list, 1,517 m by 2023 and 1,523 m by 2025 because its upper passages keep climbing. Deep caves get deeper, or shallower, each time someone returns with better instruments, which is true of more of the natural wonders of the world than their infoboxes admit.

The practical takeaway for anyone quoting a cave depth: name the source and the year. "Krubera, 2,224 m, 2024 re-survey" and "Veryovkina, 2,212 m, NSS list" are both defensible. "The deepest cave in the world is X" is not, and has not been since August 2024. Two kilometers down, the record is still being written one survey station at a time.