The world’s largest desert by total area, including its ice sheet, is Antarctica.
A desert is defined by extremely low precipitation, not by heat or the absence of snow. Antarctica receives very little snowfall across much of its interior, so it qualifies as a polar desert even though it is covered by a vast ice sheet.
Antarctica covers about 14 million square kilometres, making it larger than Europe and roughly twice the size of Australia. Nearly all of the continent is covered by ice, which contains most of the world’s fresh water in frozen form.
The Sahara is the largest hot desert, but it is smaller than Antarctica. Antarctica’s interior is also one of Earth’s coldest, driest, and windiest environments. The continent has no permanent native human population, although many countries operate research stations there.