The largest city in the world in 2026

What Is the Largest City in the World?

Jakarta, Indonesia is the largest city in the world in 2026, with a metropolitan population of about 42 million people, according to the UN World Urbanization Prospects 2025. In a landmark shift, Jakarta overtook Tokyo, which had reigned as the world most populous city since the 1960s but has now slipped to roughly 33 million as Japan population ages and declines. Dhaka in Bangladesh sits second at about 37 million, and the rest of the top five, Tokyo, Delhi and Shanghai, are all clustered around 30 million.

That headline answer comes with a crucial caveat, because the largest city in the world is not one question but three. This sits within the broader story of our world population statistics, where more than half of humanity, some 57 percent, now lives in cities, a share that has nearly doubled since 1950. City rankings depend entirely on where the boundary is drawn: by legal city limits the biggest is Chongqing in China, by metropolitan area it is Jakarta, and by the broadest urban-area method used by Britannica it is Guangzhou at 73.6 million. Each is correct; each answers a different question.

This matters more than it might seem, because the gap between the measures is enormous. Guangzhou 73.6 million by the broadest method is almost seven times its own city-proper figure, and the difference between Jakarta and Tokyo, the top two by metro population, is smaller than the swing you get from simply switching definitions on a single city. Anyone quoting a largest-city figure without saying which measure they mean is, in effect, comparing numbers that were never meant to sit side by side.

What is not in dispute is the shape of the list. Nine of the ten largest cities are in Asia, the only exception being Cairo, and the world now holds about 35 megacities, metropolitan areas above 10 million people, up from just two in 1950. The fastest growth has moved decisively toward South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, so the ranking that looks overwhelmingly Asian today will look increasingly African and South Asian by mid-century, a shift our global travel data already hint at.

Jakarta leads; nine of ten are Asian: by UN metropolitan population, Jakarta (42M) is the largest city in the world in 2026, ahead of Dhaka and Tokyo, with Cairo the only non-Asian city in the top ten.

Top 20 Largest Cities in the World, 2026

Before the table, one reminder: these are UN metropolitan figures, so a city such as Chongqing that dominates any area-based or city-limits ranking appears lower here, while sprawling agglomerations rise. Read the list as one consistent lens on city size, not the only possible one.

The table ranks the 20 largest cities by UN metropolitan population, with annual growth alongside. The growth column tells the story of the next few decades: Lagos (3.7 percent), Karachi (3.4 percent) and Dhaka (2.9 percent) are surging, while Tokyo, Seoul and Osaka are actually shrinking. Note how tightly the middle of the table bunches, with roughly ten cities separated by less than three million people, so small changes in method or year can reshuffle the order considerably. India places three cities in the top twenty, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, and China four, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing and Chongqing, underlining how the two demographic giants dominate the modern urban map.

What Are the Top 10 Largest Cities in the World?

The ten largest cities in the world by metropolitan population in 2026 are Jakarta (42M), Dhaka (37M), Tokyo (33M), Delhi (30.2M), Shanghai (29.6M), Guangzhou (27.6M), Manila (24.7M), Cairo (24.5M), Kolkata (22.5M) and Seoul (22.5M). Together they house more than 290 million people, roughly the population of the United States packed into ten urban regions, and all but Cairo sit in Asia.

The scale is hard to grasp. Jakarta 42 million residents outnumber the entire population of countries such as Canada, Poland or Argentina, all packed into a single continuous urban region. To put 42 million in perspective, that is more people than live in all but about thirty of the world countries. If the ten largest cities were combined into a single country, it would rank among the four most populous on Earth, behind only India, China and perhaps the United States, and it would generate a strikingly large share of global economic output despite occupying a tiny fraction of the planet surface.

The list has changed dramatically in a single year. Under the UN previous method, Tokyo led and Jakarta ranked in the thirties; the 2025 revision, which harmonised how urban areas are measured across countries, vaulted Jakarta and Dhaka to the top and pushed several long-standing leaders down. Delhi and Shanghai remain giants, and India now places three cities, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, in the top eleven, a reflection of the demographic weight set out in our world population data.

It is worth stressing how recent this reshuffle is. As late as 2024, most standard lists still put Tokyo first, Delhi second and Shanghai third, with Jakarta ranked in the thirties. The UN 2025 revision did not describe a sudden migration of tens of millions of people; it changed the ruler, harmonising how the boundary of a continuous urban area is drawn across countries. The lesson for anyone using these rankings is that a jump of twenty places can reflect methodology as much as reality.

The answer depends on where you draw the line: Guangzhou tops the broad urban-area measure at 73.6M, Jakarta leads by metro area at 42M, and by strict city limits Chongqing and Shanghai rank highest.

Why Do Sources Disagree on the Largest City?

Ask what the largest city in the world is and you can get three confident, contradictory answers, because a city can be measured three ways. City proper uses the legal administrative boundary, which is useful for governance but useless for comparison, since where the line falls is a political choice; by this measure Chongqing, whose municipality is the size of Austria, leads with over 30 million. Metropolitan area, or urban agglomeration, adds the surrounding suburbs and satellite towns into one continuous built-up region, the standard the UN uses, and by this measure Jakarta leads at 42 million.

The third method, the broad urban area, stretches further still to include adjacent cities that form one connected settlement. Britannica uses this approach, and it produces the eye-catching figure of 73.6 million for Guangzhou, which absorbs Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan and several other cities of the Pearl River Delta. None of these numbers is wrong; they simply answer different questions, which is why any honest ranking has to say which measure it uses. The confusion is worst in Asia, precisely because that is where the world true urban giants are concentrated.

A fourth complication sits underneath all three: the date and the source. Population estimates for cities in fast-growing countries are often several years out of date and carry wide margins of error, since a metro area gaining a million people a year can be measured very differently depending on when the count was taken. Two reputable sources using the same definition can still differ by a few million simply because one used a 2024 base and the other a 2026 projection.

How Did Jakarta Become the Largest City?

Jakarta rise to the top reflects both real growth and a change in measurement. The Jabodetabek region, which bundles Jakarta with Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi, has swelled to about 42 million people as Indonesia has urbanised rapidly, and the UN 2025 method captured that continuous sprawl more fully than before. Indonesia is the world fourth most populous country, and its capital region concentrates a large share of national economic activity, drawing millions from across the archipelago.

The crown is a mixed blessing. Jakarta is sinking by 10 to 25 centimetres a year in places, the fastest-subsiding major city on Earth, as groundwater extraction empties the aquifers beneath it, and large areas already flood routinely. The problem is so severe that Indonesia is spending roughly $33 billion to build an entirely new capital, Nusantara, on the island of Borneo. Whether that relocation eventually pulls people and government functions out of Jakarta is one of the biggest open questions in global urban geography.

Jakarta also illustrates how the largest cities increasingly grow by merging with their neighbours rather than by their old cores expanding. Jabodetabek is really five cities fused into one continuous built-up mass, and the same pattern holds for Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta and Tokyo across its prefectures. The megacity of the future is less a single dot on a map than a sprawling network of once-separate towns that have run together, which is exactly why the definition of a city boundary has become so contested.

Asia holds more than half: of the world roughly 35 megacities in 2026, more than half are in Asia, with the rest split across Latin America, Africa, Europe and North America.

Why Is Tokyo No Longer the Largest City?

Tokyo loss of the top spot is the headline demographic story of the decade. The Greater Tokyo Area, long the undisputed largest on Earth at close to 38 million, has begun to shrink as Japan population falls, and the UN now estimates it at around 33 million under the harmonised method. Japan has one of the world oldest populations and lowest birth rates, and even internal migration into Tokyo can no longer offset the national decline, a dynamic that mirrors the ageing seen in our China population data.

Tokyo remains extraordinary despite the slippage. It is still among the three or four largest metros in the world, it runs the busiest railway network on the planet, and its metropolitan economy, at roughly $1.9 trillion, is larger than the GDP of all but a handful of countries, as our largest economies in the world ranking shows. Its decline is gentle and orderly rather than a collapse, but the direction is clear, and the UN expects Tokyo to keep sliding down the table through 2050.

Tokyo is the clearest example of a broader phenomenon: the shrinking megacity. For the whole of the twentieth century, the largest cities only ever grew, so the idea of a megacity losing population is genuinely new. It is now visible across East Asia and parts of Europe, in Seoul, Osaka, and soon several Chinese cities, as birth rates fall below replacement and populations age. The next few decades will be the first in modern history in which some of the world biggest cities are quietly getting smaller.

A rare shrinking megacity: the Greater Tokyo Area peaked around 2015 near 38 million and is now slowly declining, an unusual trajectory among the world largest cities, almost all of which are still growing.

What Is the Largest City in the World by Area?

Switch from people to land and the ranking scrambles completely. By administrative area, Chongqing in China is the largest city in the world, its municipality covering about 82,400 square kilometres, larger than Austria or Ireland, though much of that territory is rural and mountainous rather than built up. Chinese municipalities are effectively province-sized units, which is why they dominate any area-based list while ranking lower by continuous urban population.

By built-up urban footprint, the picture is different again: sprawling, low-density metros such as New York, Tokyo and Atlanta cover enormous areas relative to their populations, while dense cities such as Dhaka and Mumbai pack far more people into far less space. This is why city area and city population almost never line up, and why comparing the two reveals how differently cities grow, from the vertical density of Asian megacities to the horizontal sprawl of American ones, a contrast our largest US metro areas data brings out.

The distinction between area and population has real consequences for how a city works. A dense city such as Dhaka or Mumbai can move millions on foot, bicycle and transit within a small footprint, but strains housing and sanitation; a sprawling one such as Los Angeles or Atlanta gives residents space but locks in car dependence and long commutes. So the largest city by area and the largest by population are not just different trivia answers, they describe two fundamentally different models of urban life.

A long Asian league table: beyond the top ten, cities such as Mumbai, Beijing, Karachi, Lagos and Istanbul all exceed 16 million, and the great majority of the top 20 are in Asia.

Only three cities in the top 20 sit outside Asia: Mexico City, Sao Paulo and New York, plus Cairo and Lagos in Africa and Istanbul straddling two continents. Europe, once home to the world largest cities in the industrial age, no longer places a single entry in the top 20, a striking reversal of the geography of a century ago when London and Paris led the world.

How Fast Are Megacities Growing?

The rise of the megacity is one of the defining trends of the modern era. In 1950 there were just two, New York and Tokyo; by 2026 there are about 35, and the UN projects roughly 37 by 2050. A megacity is any metropolitan area above 10 million people, and their spread tracks the broader move of humanity into cities, which our world population statistics place at the heart of this century demographic change.

Crucially, the growth has moved. The megacities added in the coming decades will overwhelmingly be in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where cities such as Dhaka, Karachi, Lagos, Kinshasa and Dar es Salaam are expanding 3 to 5 percent a year, while East Asian and European megacities stagnate or shrink. This reshaping of the urban map carries enormous consequences for infrastructure, housing, migration and commerce, themes that run through our migration statistics and retail e-commerce data.

From 2 to nearly 40: the number of megacities has grown from just two in 1950 to about 35 in 2026, and the UN projects around 37 by 2050, with almost all new additions in Asia and Africa.

Which Region Has the Most Large Cities?

Asia dominates completely. It is home to more than half of the world megacities and nine of its ten largest cities, spanning East Asia (Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul), South Asia (Delhi, Dhaka, Mumbai, Karachi) and Southeast Asia (Jakarta, Manila). This concentration reflects the sheer weight of population in China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and the speed at which their populations have moved from countryside to city over the past half century.

The other regions trail well behind. Latin America has six megacities, led by São Paulo and Mexico City; Africa has a fast-growing handful led by Cairo and Lagos; Europe has just Moscow, Paris and London near the threshold; and North America has New York, Mexico City and Los Angeles. The economic pull of these hubs, and the visitors they draw, is captured in our most visited countries and most visited cities rankings.

Africa and South Asia set the pace: Lagos, Karachi and Dhaka are growing around 3 to 4 percent a year, while Tokyo, Seoul and Osaka are shrinking, a reversal that will reshape the ranking by 2050.

Which Cities Have the Largest Economies?

The largest cities by population are not always the largest by economic output. Tokyo has the biggest metropolitan economy in the world at roughly $1.9 trillion, followed by New York at about $1.8 trillion, then Los Angeles, Shanghai and London. The world top 300 metro economies generate around 60 percent of global GDP while housing only about 20 percent of its people, a concentration of wealth and productivity that our GDP per capita by country data helps explain.

The gap between demographic size and economic size is striking. Jakarta and Dhaka lead the population table but rank far lower by GDP, while New York and London punch far above their population weight, because output per person in wealthy cities is many times higher than in fast-growing ones. The companies headquartered in these hubs shape the global economy, as explored in our most valuable companies in the world, and the divide between populous cities and productive ones is one of the central features of the modern urban world.

Tokyo and New York lead output: despite ranking lower by population, Tokyo ($1.9T) and New York ($1.8T) have the largest metropolitan economies, far ahead of the fast-growing megacities of South Asia.

The Largest Cities in Numbers

A few numbers capture global urban geography in 2026. Jakarta is the largest city in the world at about 42 million by UN metro population, ahead of Dhaka at 37 million, after overtaking Tokyo. Nine of the ten largest cities are in Asia, the world holds around 35 megacities, and 57 percent of humanity now lives in cities. Taken together, these figures describe a planet that is not only more urban than ever but whose urban centre of gravity is shifting fast, away from a shrinking East Asia and toward a surging South Asia and Africa.

Together these figures show that the largest city in the world is a moving target, redrawn by both real growth and the way we choose to measure it. Jakarta wears the crown today; by the definition you pick it could be Guangzhou or Chongqing, and by the time today young children are adults it may well be Dhaka in Bangladesh. The only safe conclusion is the one every serious demographer reaches: name your definition, cite your source, and treat any single crown as provisional rather than permanent.

Frequently Asked Questions: Largest Cities