China's Tian'e Longtan Bridge carries a 600-metre arch across the Longtan reservoir — the longest arch bridge span ever built.
Quick answer: 1. Tian'e Longtan Bridge, 2. Pingnan Third Bridge, 3. Chaotianmen Bridge, 4. Lupu Bridge, 5. Bosideng Bridge, 6. Zigui Yangtze River Bridge, 7. New River Gorge Bridge, 8. Bayonne Bridge, 9. Hejiang Yangtze River Bridge, 10. Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The arch is the oldest long-span bridge form still in active service, and it is having a second golden age. Where a suspension bridge hangs its deck from cables in tension, an arch pushes its load outward and down into the rock on either side of a gorge — which makes it the natural choice for the deep river canyons of southwest China, where eight of the ten longest arch spans in the world are found. This list ranks the ten completed, in-service arch bridges with the longest main spans. The spread is narrower than you might expect: the world record holder beats the tenth-place Sydney Harbour Bridge by less than 100 metres, and two of the top ten opened in the early 1930s.
Opened on 1 February 2024, its 600 m steel-reinforced concrete arch crosses the reservoir of the Longtan Dam in Guangxi and took the world record from the Pingnan Third Bridge by 25 metres. It is the longest concrete arch ever built, by a wide margin.
The world record holder from its opening in December 2020 until Tian'e Longtan overtook it. Its 575 m arch over the Xunjiang river in Guangxi is built from concrete-filled steel tube — steel tubes pumped full of concrete, which get the stiffness of steel during erection and the compressive strength of concrete in service.
A 552 m steel through-arch carrying road and rail across the Yangtze at Chongqing. When it opened in 2009 it took the record for the longest arch span of any kind, and it remains the longest arch bridge carrying rail traffic.
The 550 m Lupu Bridge over Shanghai's Huangpu river held the world arch record from 2003 until 2009, beating the Chinese-built record chain's predecessor by 32 metres. Visitors can climb 367 steps to a walkway along the crown of the arch.
A 530 m concrete-filled steel tube arch over the Dadu river in Sichuan, opened in 2012. It was the longest CFST arch in the world for eight years, until the Pingnan Third Bridge surpassed it.
A 519 m steel arch spanning the Yangtze just downstream of the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei, completed in 2019. Its position in the dam's immediate approach meant the arch had to be built without falsework in the river channel.
The longest arch span outside Asia, and the world record holder from 1977 to 2003. Its 518 m steel deck arch carries US Route 19 some 267 m above the New River in West Virginia, and appears on the state's commemorative quarter.
Opened in 1931 connecting Bayonne, New Jersey to Staten Island, its 510 m steel through-arch was the longest in the world for 46 years. Between 2013 and 2019 its roadway was raised 20 metres inside the original arch so that modern container ships could reach Newark.
A 507 m concrete-filled steel tube arch crossing the Yangtze at Hejiang in Sichuan, completed in 2021. It is one of four CFST arches in the top ten, a form China has used to push arch spans past what conventional reinforced concrete allows.
The most recognisable arch bridge in the world, opened in March 1932 with a 503 m steel through-arch. It was never the longest — the Bayonne Bridge beat it by seven metres a few months earlier — but at 39,000 tonnes of steel it is by far the heaviest.
| # | Name | Span | Country | Completed | Arch type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tian'e Longtan Bridge | 600 m | China | 2024 | Steel-reinforced concrete |
| 2 | Pingnan Third Bridge | 575 m | China | 2020 | Concrete-filled steel tube |
| 3 | Chaotianmen Bridge | 552 m | China | 2009 | Steel |
| 4 | Lupu Bridge | 550 m | China | 2003 | Steel |
| 5 | Bosideng Bridge | 530 m | China | 2012 | Concrete-filled steel tube |
| 6 | Zigui Yangtze River Bridge | 519 m | China | 2019 | Steel |
| 7 | New River Gorge Bridge | 518 m | United States | 1977 | Steel |
| 8 | Bayonne Bridge | 510 m | United States | 1931 | Steel |
| 9 | Hejiang Yangtze River Bridge | 507 m | China | 2021 | Concrete-filled steel tube |
| 10 | Sydney Harbour Bridge | 503 m | Australia | 1932 | Steel |
Ranking metric: main span length in metres — the clear distance the arch carries between its springing points, which is the standard engineering figure for ranking a bridge's span and is distinct from total structure length. Only arch bridges are included; suspension, cable-stayed, girder, truss and cantilever spans are ranked separately and excluded here. Both through-arch and deck-arch configurations count, as do all arch materials (steel, concrete, and concrete-filled steel tube). Inclusion requires the bridge to be complete and open to traffic as of September 2026. This excludes two structures that would otherwise rank in the top ten: the 580 m Fenglai Bridge in Chongqing and the 520 m Guniuhe Bridge in Guizhou, both of which had closed their arches but had not opened to traffic at the time of writing. Figures follow Wikipedia's list of longest arch bridge spans, cross-checked against each bridge's own documentation. Where the two disagree, the dedicated source wins: the summary table lists the Pingnan Third Bridge at 560 m, but the bridge's own record — and the peer-reviewed construction literature, and the widely reported 25 m margin by which Tian'e Longtan beat it — put the span at 575 m, which is the figure used here. The ordering is unaffected either way.
The Tian'e Longtan Bridge in Guangxi, China, with a main span of 600 metres. It opened on 1 February 2024 and is also the longest concrete arch bridge ever built.
Its 503 m span was near the practical limit for steel arches in 1932, but arch spans have grown by roughly 100 metres since — almost entirely in the last twenty years, and almost entirely in China. The Sydney Harbour Bridge was never the world's longest arch: the Bayonne Bridge in New Jersey opened a few months earlier with a span seven metres longer.
Two are close. The Fenglai Bridge in Chongqing has a 580 m steel arch that would rank second, and the Guniuhe Bridge in Guizhou has a 520 m arch that would rank sixth. Both had completed arch closure but were not yet open to traffic as of September 2026, so neither is included here.
An arch carries its load in compression and must push that force into solid ground at both ends, so its span is limited by how much thrust the abutments can take and by how much the arch itself weighs. A suspension bridge carries its deck in tension from cables, which scales much further — the longest suspension span, Turkey's 1915 Canakkale Bridge, is 2,023 metres, more than three times the longest arch.
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