Inversions are the purest bragging right in coaster design — every loop, corkscrew, and zero-g roll is a moment spent fully upside down. This list ranks the 25 operating roller coasters with the most inversions in the world as of August 2026, verified ride-by-ride against RCDB. Ties are broken by opening date, oldest first.
The structure of this ranking is stranger than most: no operating coaster on Earth has 9, 11, 12, or 13 inversions. The list jumps from 14 straight down to 10, then to 8 — and the seven-inversion tier is so crowded that the top-25 cutoff lands inside it.
The Ranking
| # | Name | inversions | opened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Smiler | 14 | 2013 |
| 2 | Colossus | 10 | 2002 |
| 3 | Crazy Coaster | 10 | 2013 |
| 4 | Altair | 10 | 2014 |
| 5 | Velikolukskiy Myasokombinat-2 | 10 | 2017 |
| 6 | Sik | 10 | 2022 |
| 7 | Dragon Khan | 8 | 1995 |
| 8 | Avalancha | 8 | 2002 |
| 9 | Steel Curtain | 8 | 2019 |
| 10 | Goudurix | 7 | 1989 |
| 11 | Viper | 7 | 1990 |
| 12 | Montu | 7 | 1996 |
| 13 | Medusa | 7 | 1999 |
| 14 | The Incredible Hulk Coaster | 7 | 1999 |
| 15 | Medusa (Discovery Kingdom) | 7 | 2000 |
| 16 | Kraken | 7 | 2000 |
| 17 | Superman / la Atracción de Acero | 7 | 2002 |
| 18 | Scream! | 7 | 2003 |
| 19 | Hydra the Revenge | 7 | 2005 |
| 20 | Takabisha (高飛車) | 7 | 2011 |
| 21 | Banshee | 7 | 2014 |
| 22 | Helix | 7 | 2014 |
| 23 | TMNT Shellraiser | 7 | 2019 |
| 24 | Decepticoaster | 7 | 2021 |
| 25 | Voltron Nevera | 7 | 2024 |
The Smiler: 14 Inversions, Unchallenged Since 2013
The Smiler at Alton Towers has held the world inversion record since May 2013 — thirteen years and counting, one of the longest-standing records in modern coaster history. Gerstlauer’s tangled steel knot packs fourteen inversions into a plot the size of a car park, and nothing announced anywhere in the world is currently set to beat it.
The record lineage runs through this list: Dragon Khan (8) held the crown from 1995, Colossus at Thorpe Park (10) took it in 2002, and The Smiler has owned it ever since.
The 10-Inversion Club
Colossus’s Intamin layout proved so popular that Intamin kept building it — Altair at Cinecittà World, Sik at Flamingo Land, Crazy Coaster in Chongqing, and Wonder Island’s entry in St. Petersburg all run versions of the same ten-inversion design (RCDB catalogs the later builds as the 10 Inversion, Rev. B). Velikolukskiy Myasokombinat-2 earns the title of most gloriously named coaster on this list: it’s sponsored by, and named after, the Velikiye Luki meat-processing plant.
The Crowded Seven-Inversion Tier
Seventeen operating coasters carry exactly seven inversions, from Goudurix at Parc Astérix (1989) to Voltron Nevera at Europa-Park (2024) and Decepticoaster at Universal Studios Beijing. B&M’s classic seven-loopers — Montu, Kraken, both Medusas, Scream!, Hydra the Revenge, and Banshee, the world’s longest inverted coaster — make up the heart of the group.
One honest footnote: AlpenFury at Canada’s Wonderland opened in July 2025 marketing nine inversions, which would place it seventh in the world. RCDB — the authority this list follows — counts seven, because its launch and top-hat elements don’t fully invert riders. Either way it’s the newest member of the club, sitting just outside the cutoff.
FAQ
Which roller coaster has the most inversions in the world?
The Smiler at Alton Towers in the UK, with 14 inversions — a world record it has held since May 2013. No other operating coaster has more than 10.
What counts as an inversion?
An element that turns riders fully upside down: vertical loops, corkscrews, cobra rolls, barrel rolls, and zero-g rolls all qualify. Overbanked turns and beyond-vertical drops don’t — which is why some parks’ marketing counts run higher than the record books.
What was the record before The Smiler?
Colossus at Thorpe Park held the record with 10 inversions from 2002 to 2013, after taking it from Dragon Khan at PortAventura, whose eight inversions led the world from 1995.
Photo: BWard 1997 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)