Who has climbed Everest the most times?

Kami Rita Sherpa of Nepal, who reached the summit for the 32nd time in May 2026, as a guide. Nobody else is close.

Among women, the record belongs to Lhakpa Sherpa, a Nepali climber who reached her 11th summit on 17 May 2026 — coincidentally the same morning as Kami Rita's 32nd. She first summited in 2000, becoming the first Nepali woman to reach the top and survive, and has added to her tally in bursts ever since, most recently climbing in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2022 and 2026.

Her story is told in the 2023 Netflix documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa. Because Lhakpa is herself an ethnic Sherpa, the separate record for a non-Nepali ("foreign") woman belongs to the American guide Melissa Arnot, who has summited six times.

Among men who are not Sherpas, the record belongs to the British mountain guide Kenton Cool, who reached the summit for the 20th time on 22 May 2026, breaking his own record yet again. Cool, an IFMGA-qualified guide from Gloucestershire, first summited Everest in 2004 and has gone back almost every year since, previously setting the non-Sherpa mark at 16 summits in 2022, then 17 in 2023, 18 in 2024 and 19 in 2025 before his 2026 climb. His 20 summits are, as of mid-2026, four more than any other non-Nepali climber and ten more than any other British climber has managed.

The Sherpas who make the summits possible

Hired climbers, nearly all of them Sherpas, have made more than half of all Everest summits: 7,081 of the 13,737 recorded by the Himalayan Database to the end of 2025.

They fix the ropes, carry the oxygen and the tents, and climb beside their clients, so a guide with ten or twenty summits is not unusual. The records for the most summits belong to them, not to the paying climbers; among non-Sherpa climbers generally, Kenton Cool holds the lead with 20 summits, most recently in May 2026.

How Sherpas and guides work on an expedition is in the guide's Planning your trip, and the totals in How many people have climbed Everest?