Which continent contains the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon rainforest?

South America contains the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

The Amazon rainforest occupies much of the Amazon Basin and extends across countries including Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. About 60 percent of the forest lies in Brazil. The Amazon River and its tributaries form an enormous drainage network through the region.

The forest supports extraordinary biological diversity and plays major roles in regional rainfall, carbon storage, and global climate systems. It is not an untouched wilderness without human history: Indigenous peoples have lived throughout the basin for thousands of years and continue to manage and defend their territories. The Congo Basin is Africa’s largest rainforest, but it is smaller than the Amazon, which is why the continent answer is South America.