Element: closest() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨April 2017⁩.

The closest() method of the Element interface traverses the element and its parents (heading toward the document root) until it finds a node that matches the specified CSS selector.

Syntax

closest(selectors)

Parameters

selectors: A string of valid CSS selectors to match the Element and its ancestors against.

Return value

The closest ancestor Element or itself, which matches the selectors. If there are no such element, null.

Exceptions

SyntaxError DOMException: Thrown if the selectors is not a valid CSS selector.

Examples

HTML

html

<article>
  <div id="div-01">
    Here is div-01
    <div id="div-02">
      Here is div-02
      <div id="div-03">Here is div-03</div>
    </div>
  </div>
</article>

JavaScript

const el = document.getElementById("div-03");

// the closest ancestor with the id of "div-02"
console.log(el.closest("#div-02")); // <div id="div-02">

// the closest ancestor which is a div in a div
console.log(el.closest("div div")); // <div id="div-03">

// the closest ancestor which is a div and has a parent article
console.log(el.closest("article > div")); // <div id="div-01">

// the closest ancestor which is not a div
console.log(el.closest(":not(div)")); // <article>

Specifications

Specification
DOM # ref-for-dom-element-closest①

Browser compatibility

Compatibility notes

In Edge 15-18 document.createElement(tagName).closest(tagName) will return null if the element is not first connected (directly or indirectly) to the context object, for example the Document object in the case of the normal DOM.

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This page was last modified on ⁨Sep 25, 2025⁩ by MDN contributors.

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