The highest TCP port number is 65,535.
The TCP protocol provides 16 bits for the port number, and this is interpreted as an unsigned integer; all values are valid, apart from 0, and so the largest port number is (2^16 - 1) or 65,535. This is true for TCP IPv4 and IPv6, as the same TCP header format is used irrespective of TCP version.
On Linux, it is easy to check this:
$ telnet localhost 65535
Trying 127.0.0.1...Above: telnet tries to connect when port 65,535 is used. Whether it succeeds or not depends on whether there is a telnet server listening on that port, but telnet can still attempt the connection.
$ telnet localhost 65536
65536: bad port numberAbove: conversely, telnet fails immediately with bad port number when port 65,536 is used.
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