In our earlier work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 161101 (2009)], it was shown that nonextremal highly charged Reissner–Nordstrøm–de Sitter black holes are gravitationally unstable in $D>6$-dimensional space-times. Here, we find accurate threshold values of the $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ term at which the instability of the extremally charged black holes starts. The larger $D$ is, the smaller is the threshold value of $\mathrm{\Lambda }$. We have shown that the ratio $\rho =r_h/r_{\cos }$ (where $r_{\cos }$ and $r_h$ are the cosmological and event horizons) is proportional to $e^{-(D-4)/2}$ at the onset of instability for $D=7,8,\dots 11$, implying that the same law should fulfill for arbitrary $D$. This is numerical evidence that extremally charged Reissner–Nordstrøm–de Sitter black holes are gravitationally unstable for $D>6$, while asymptotically flat extremally charged Reissner-Nordstrøm black holes are stable for all $D$. The instability is not connected to the horizon instability discussed recently in the literature, and, unlike the later one, develops also outside the event horizon; that is, it can be seen by an external observer. In addition, for the nonextremal case through fitting of the numerical data, we obtained an approximate analytical formula which relates values of charge and the $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ term at the onset of instability.

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