Cable-stayed bridge in the context of "Rio–Antirrio bridge"

A bridge is a structure that crosses an obstacle such as a river, lake, railroad, road, or ravine. Its primary function is to transport vehicles, trains, and pedestrians, but bridges may also accommodate pipelines, buildings, wildlife, and canals. Basic structures used in bridge design include arches, trusses, beams, cantilevers, suspension cables, and cable-stays. Bridges are configured in a variety of forms, such as viaducts, aqueducts, trestles, movable bridges, double-deckers, pontoons, and portable military bridges. They may also be categorized by their materials, which include wood, brick, stone, iron, steel, and concrete.

The history of bridges reflects the evolution of humankind's engineering technologies. The Romans and ancient Chinese built major bridges of stone and timber. During the Renaissance, advances in science and engineering led to wider bridge spans and more elegant designs. Concrete was perfected in the early 1800s, and proved to be superior to stone in many regards. With the Industrial Revolution came mass-produced steel, which enabled the creation of suspension and cable-stayed bridges that could span wide obstacles.

The Rio–Antirrio Bridge (Greek: Γέφυρα Ρίου–Αντιρρίου), officially the Charilaos Trikoupis Bridge, is one of the world's longest multi-span cable-stayed bridges and longest of the fully suspended type. It crosses the Rion Strait between the Gulf of Corinth and Gulf of Patras, linking the town of Rio on the Peloponnese peninsula to Antirrio on mainland Greece by road. It opened one day before the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics, on 12 August 2004, and was used to transport the Olympic flame.

The world's longest suspension bridges are listed according to the length of their main span (i.e., the length of suspended roadway between the bridge's towers). The length of the main span is the most common method of comparing the sizes of suspension bridges, often correlating with the height of the towers and the engineering complexity involved in designing and constructing the bridge. If one bridge has a longer span than another, it does not necessarily mean that the bridge is longer from shore to shore (or from abutment to abutment).

Suspension bridges have the longest spans of any type of bridge. Cable-stayed bridges, the next longest design, are practical for spans up to just over one kilometre (the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world has a 1,104 m span). Therefore, as of October 2025, the 28 longest bridges on this list are the 28 longest spans of all types of vehicular bridges (other than floating pontoon bridges).

The Nordhordland Bridge (Norwegian: Nordhordlandsbrua) is a combined cable-stayed and pontoon bridge which crosses Salhusfjorden between Klauvaneset (in Bergen Municipality) and the island of Flatøy (in Alver Municipality) in Vestland county, Norway. It is 1,614 meters (5,295 ft) long, of which the pontoon section is 1,246 meters (4,088 ft) long. The cable-stayed section consists of a single 99-meter (325 ft) tall H-pylon which has a length of 368 meters (1,207 ft) and a main span of 172 meters (564 ft). This allows for a clearance of 32 meters (105 ft).

The floating section is a steel box girder bridge with ten pontoons, which because of the fjord's depth are not laterally anchored. The roadway sits on an orthotropic deck. The pontoons and the cable-stayed bridge are built in concrete, with the main span being supported with 48 cables. The fjord end of the main span is supported by a 30-meter (98 ft) deep foundation, where the two bridges meet. From there and for 414 meters (1,358 ft), the roadwall has a 5.7 percent gradient on a viaduct anchored to the pontoon bridge.

The Øresund Bridge or Öresund Bridge is a combined railway and motorway cable-stayed bridge across the Øresund strait between Denmark and Sweden. It is the second longest bridge in Europe and combines both roadway and railway in a single structure, consisting of international European route E20 and the Øresund Line respectively. It runs nearly 8 kilometres (5 miles) from the Swedish coast to the artificial island of Peberholm in the middle of the strait. The Øresund Link is completed by the 4-kilometre (2.5 mi) Øresund Tunnel from Peberholm to the Danish island of Amager.

Construction began in 1995 and it opened to traffic on 1 July 2000. The bridge, as part of the Øresund Link, directly connects the road and rail networks of the Scandinavian Peninsula with Mainland Europe, via the Great Belt Fixed Link (constructed 1988–1998) connecting Zealand to Funen and thence to the Jutland Peninsula. Both projects helped to lessen the isolation of Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia from the rest of the continent. A data cable also makes the Øresund Link the backbone of Internet data transmission between central Europe and Sweden.