The tarsal bones are seven bones in each foot that form your ankle and the back half of your midfoot. They sit between your lower leg bones and the long bones (metatarsals) that run through the front of your foot. Together, they absorb the impact of every step, support your body weight, and give your foot the flexibility it needs to walk on uneven ground.
The seven tarsal bones are the calcaneus, talus, navicular, cuboid, and three cuneiforms (medial, middle, and lateral). They’re arranged in two main groups, with the navicular acting as a bridge between them.
The Two Bones of the Hindfoot
The calcaneus and the talus make up the back of the foot. The calcaneus is the largest tarsal bone and forms your heel. It’s the first point of contact when your foot hits the ground during walking, bearing your full body weight at heel strike. The talus sits directly on top of the calcaneus and connects your foot to your lower leg. It joins with the tibia and fibula to form the ankle joint, which is why it plays such a central role in letting you point and flex your foot.
These two bones work as a unit. The joint between them, called the subtalar joint, allows your foot to tilt inward and outward, which is essential for adapting to uneven surfaces. Most of the large, powerful movements of the ankle happen where the talus meets the leg bones, while the subtalar joint handles the side-to-side adjustments.
The Five Bones of the Midfoot
Moving forward from the hindfoot, you reach five smaller tarsal bones: the navicular, the cuboid, and the three cuneiforms.
The navicular is positioned on the inner (medial) side of the foot, acting as a bridge between the talus behind it and the cuneiforms in front. It’s a keystone of the foot’s main arch. The cuboid sits on the outer (lateral) side and connects the calcaneus to the two outermost metatarsals. It’s a compact, block-shaped bone that helps stabilize the outer edge of your foot.
The three cuneiforms are wedge-shaped bones that sit side by side in front of the navicular. They’re named simply by position: medial (closest to the big toe side), middle, and lateral (closest to the outside of the foot). Each one is broader on its top surface and narrower on the bottom, which helps create the transverse arch that runs across the width of your foot. They connect directly to the first three metatarsals, forming the base for your toes’ long bones.
How They Work Together
The tarsal bones don’t just stack like building blocks. They interlock to form the arches of the foot, which act as natural shock absorbers. The longitudinal arch runs from heel to toes along the inner side of the foot, with the navicular as its high point. The transverse arch runs across the midfoot, shaped by the wedge geometry of the cuneiforms and cuboid. These arches distribute your weight between the heel and the ball of the foot, storing and releasing energy with each step.
The joints between tarsal bones are mostly flat, gliding joints that allow only small amounts of movement. That limited motion is intentional. It gives the midfoot enough flexibility to absorb shock and adapt to terrain, while keeping the foot rigid enough to push off the ground with force. The one exception is the ankle joint itself, where the talus meets the leg bones. That joint works like a hinge, allowing roughly 12 to 15 degrees of motion off the straight-ahead plane, which is why your foot naturally angles slightly outward when you swing it forward during walking.
How Tarsal Bones Compare to Wrist Bones
The tarsal bones in the foot are often compared to the carpal bones in the wrist, and while they share an evolutionary origin, there are clear differences. The wrist has eight carpal bones; the ankle has seven tarsals. This is because the ankle lacks one of the small bones found on the wrist’s pinky side (the pisiform) and has fused what would be two separate bones into the talus.
Tarsals are also significantly larger and thicker than carpals, which makes sense given that your feet carry your entire body weight while your hands prioritize fine motor control. The navicular in the foot corresponds to the scaphoid in the wrist, and the three cuneiforms in the foot map to the trapezium, trapezoid, and capitate in the hand.
When Tarsal Bones Develop
The tarsal bones don’t all harden on the same schedule. The calcaneus and talus are the first to begin turning from cartilage to bone, starting around the sixth month of fetal development. The cuboid begins ossifying right around birth. From there, the remaining bones follow over the first several years of life: the lateral cuneiform during the first year, the medial cuneiform between ages 2 and 3, the middle cuneiform between ages 3 and 4, and the navicular last, around ages 4 to 5.
The calcaneus is the only tarsal bone with a secondary growth plate, which doesn’t fully fuse until the late teens or early twenties. This is why heel pain in active adolescents is so common. The growing bone is vulnerable to repetitive stress before that growth plate closes, typically around age 16 in females and age 20 in males.
Common Tarsal Bone Injuries
Tarsal bones can develop stress fractures, particularly in people who run, jump, or suddenly increase their activity level. The calcaneus, talus, and navicular are the most commonly affected. Each produces a slightly different pattern of symptoms.
A calcaneal stress fracture causes pain in the heel during exercise. It’s often mistaken for plantar fasciitis, but the pain tends to be more localized to the sides of the heel when you squeeze it. Navicular stress fractures are trickier because the pain is vague and hard to pinpoint, usually felt somewhere across the top of the midfoot. It worsens with sprinting or jumping. Talar stress fractures are the least common of the three and produce a diffuse ache in the heel or ankle area that’s also difficult to localize.
In all cases, the hallmark of a tarsal stress fracture is pain that develops gradually, gets worse with weight-bearing activity, and improves with rest. Tenderness directly over the bone when you press on it is another key sign.
Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome
The tarsal bones also form part of a narrow passageway on the inner side of the ankle called the tarsal tunnel. The floor of this tunnel is made up of the calcaneus, the inner wall of the talus, and the lower end of the tibia. A band of tough tissue stretches over the top like a roof. Several tendons, a major nerve, and an artery pass through this tight space.
When the nerve running through the tarsal tunnel gets compressed, it produces burning, tingling, or numbness along the inner ankle and the sole of the foot. This is tarsal tunnel syndrome, and it’s essentially the foot’s version of carpal tunnel syndrome in the wrist. Anything that reduces space inside the tunnel, such as swelling from an ankle sprain, a cyst, or flat feet that strain the inner ankle, can trigger it.