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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-29T13:29:14+00:00

I am looking for a CSS selector that lets me select the penultimate child

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I am looking for a CSS selector that lets me select the penultimate child of a list.

<ul>
     <li>1</li>
     <li>2</li>
     <li>3</li>
     <li>4</li>
     <li>5</li> <!-- select the pre last item dynamically no matter how long this list is -->
     <li>6</li>
</ul>

Static method:

ul li:nth-child(5)

Dynamic method:

ul li:last-child(-1)

which of course doesn’t validate, also nth-last-child doesn’t seem to provide a dynamic way.. I can fallback to javascript but I’m wondering if there is a css way I overlooked

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can use :nth-last-child(); in fact, besides :nth-last-of-type() I don’t know what else you could use. I’m not sure what you mean by “dynamic”, but if you mean whether the style applies to the new second last child when more children are added to the list, yes it will. Interactive fiddle.

    ul li:nth-last-child(2)
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