The official elevation of Mount Everest agreed by Nepal and China in 2020 is 8,848.86 metres above sea level.
The joint announcement refined earlier measurements that commonly gave Everest’s height as 8,848 metres or 8,848.86 metres depending on the survey and whether snow or rock was being referenced. Surveyors used modern satellite positioning, gravimetric observations, and other geodetic techniques to establish the updated figure.
Everest stands in the Himalayas on the border between Nepal and Tibet, an autonomous region of China. Nepal calls it Sagarmatha, while Tibetans call it Chomolungma. The mountain’s English name honours George Everest, a nineteenth-century Surveyor General of India, although he did not personally measure the peak.
The height can be affected by snow depth, tectonic movement, and the chosen reference model for sea level. That is why precise figures are periodically reassessed. Everest is the highest point above sea level, but not the point farthest from Earth’s centre; that distinction belongs to the summit of Ecuador’s Chimborazo because of Earth’s equatorial bulge.