In 2025, the Ile-de-France region, sometimes called the Paris region, was the most populous in France. It is located in the northern part of France, divided into eight departments and crossed by the Seine River. The region contains Paris, its large suburbs, and several rural areas. The total population in metropolitan France was estimated at around ** million inhabitants. In the DOM (Overseas Department), France had more than *** million citizens spread over the islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion, Mayotte, and the South American territory of French Guiana. Ile-de-France: the most populous region in France According to the source, more than ** million French citizens lived in the Ile-de-France region. Ile-de-France was followed by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Occitanie region which is in the Southern part of the country. Ile-de-France is not only the most populated region in France, it is also the French region with the highest population density. In 2020, there were ******* residents per square kilometer in Ile-de-France compared to ***** for Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the second most populated region in France. More than two million people were living in the city of Paris in 2025. Thus, the metropolitan area outside the city of Paris, called the suburbs or banlieue in French, had more than ten million inhabitants. Ile-de-France concentrates the majority of the country’s economic and political activities. An urban population In 2024, the total population of France amounted to over 68 million. The population in the country has increased since the mid-2000s. As well as the other European countries, France is experiencing urbanization. In 2023, more than ** percent of the French population lived in cities. This phenomenon shapes France’s geography.

Paris was in 2022 the most populated city in France with over *** million inhabitants. Marseille was the second most important city in terms of inhabitants, and Lyon, the third. With ******* inhabitants, Lille was the tenth most populated city in France.

The population density in France is unevenly distributed. The country, which enjoys a great variety of regions and landscapes, is becoming more and more urbanized, and big cities concentrate economic activities. Ile-de-France and overseas regions: the most densely populated French regions In 2022, Ile-de-France was the French region with the highest population density. According to the source, there were ******* residents per square kilometer in Ile-de-France. In 2025, more than ***** million people lived in this region, which contains the city of Paris and its greater suburbs. The overseas regions, such as Guadeloupe, Reunion, and Martinique, are the most densely populated French regions after the Paris region. On the other hand, Corsica was the least densely populated region in metropolitan France. However, it is Guyane, the largest overseas department, which has the lowest density in France, with only *** inhabitants per square kilometre. Largely covered by the Amazon jungle, this French territory is almost entirely populated along the coasts. The overall population density in metropolitan France reached ****** inhabitants per square kilometer in 2021, compared to ****** in 2007. Ile-de-France, and particularly Paris, is the center of most of the economic, political, and social activities in France. For instance, the ten most visited national French museums and galleries in 2017 were all located in Paris. In 2014, Ile-de-France was the French region that had the highest expenditure on Research and Development (19 billion euros). Regions in France Hauts-de-France, in the northern part of the country, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in the southeastern part, were the second and the third most densely populated regions in Metropolitan France. The French southeastern coast is known for being highly urbanized, while its living conditions (sun, Mediterranean sea…) make it one of the most attractive regions to work and live in France. Hauts-de-France, which used to be one of the leading industrial regions of the country, now benefits from its geographical proximity to the heart of Europe: Brussels. Furthermore, rural regions like Centre-Val de Loire or Bourgogne Franche-Comté are less populous, and the share of the rural population in France is decreasing for years now.

This bar chart presents the population of the city of Paris in France in 2020, distributed by district, also called arrondissement in French. It shows that the XVe arrondissement, located on the left bank of the river Seine, was the most populous district with more than 231,000 inhabitants.

This statistic shows the ten largest cities in France as of 2022. In 2022, around 2.11 million people lived in Paris, making it the largest city in France.

By 1800, London had grown to be the largest city in Western Europe with just under one million inhabitants. Paris was now the second largest city, with over half a million people, and Naples was the third largest city with 450 thousand people. The only other cities with over two hundred thousand inhabitants at this time were Vienna, Amsterdam and Dublin. Another noticeable development is the inclusion of many more northern cities from a wider variety of countries. The dominance of cities from France and Mediterranean countries was no longer the case, and the dispersal of European populations in 1800 was much closer to how it is today, more than two centuries later.

In 2025, Moscow was the largest city in Europe with an estimated urban agglomeration of 12.74 million people. The French capital, Paris, was the second largest city in 2025 at 11.35 million, followed by the capitals of the United Kingdom and Spain, with London at 9.84 million and Madrid at 6.81 million people. Istanbul, which would otherwise be the largest city in Europe in 2025, is excluded as it is only partially in Europe, with a sizeable part of its population living in Asia. Europe’s population is almost 750 million Since 1950, the population of Europe has increased by approximately 200 million people, increasing from 550 million to 750 million in these seventy years. Before the turn of the millennium, Europe was the second-most populated continent, before it was overtaken by Africa, which saw its population increase from 228 million in 1950 to 817 million by 2000. Asia has consistently had the largest population of the world’s continents and was estimated to have a population of 4.6 billion. Europe’s largest countries Including its territory in Asia, Russia is by far the largest country in the world, with a territory of around 17 million square kilometers, almost double that of the next largest country, Canada. Within Europe, Russia also has the continent's largest population at 145 million, followed by Germany at 83 million and the United Kingdom at almost 68 million. By contrast, Europe is also home to various micro-states such as San Marino, which has a population of just 30 thousand.

In 2024, Russia had the largest population among European countries at ***** million people. The next largest countries in terms of their population size were Turkey at **** million, Germany at **** million, the United Kingdom at **** million, and France at **** million. Europe is also home to some of the world’s smallest countries, such as the microstates of Liechtenstein and San Marino, with populations of ****** and ****** respectively. Europe’s largest economies Germany was Europe’s largest economy in 2023, with a Gross Domestic Product of around *** trillion Euros, while the UK and France are the second and third largest economies, at *** trillion and *** trillion euros respectively. Prior to the mid-2000s, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, Italy, had an economy that was of a similar sized to France and the UK, before diverging growth patterns saw the UK and France become far larger economies than Italy. Moscow and Istanbul the megacities of Europe Two cities on the eastern borders of Europe were Europe’s largest in 2023. The Turkish city of Istanbul, with a population of 15.8 million, and the Russian capital, Moscow, with a population of 12.7 million. Istanbul is arguably the world’s most famous transcontinental city with territory in both Europe and Asia and has been an important center for commerce and culture for over 2,000 years. Paris was the third largest European city with a population of ** million, with London being the fourth largest at *** million.

The aboriginal populations chart shows the composition of the aboriginal population in a municipality.

Number of people belonging to a visible minority group as defined by the Employment Equity Act and, if so, the visible minority group to which the person belongs. The Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as 'persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.' The visible minority population consists mainly of the following groups: South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean and Japanese.

In 1500, the largest city was Paris, with an estimated 225 thousand inhabitants, almost double the population of the second-largest city, Naples. As in 1330, Venice and Milan remain the third and fourth largest cities in Western Europe, however Genoa's population almost halved from 1330 until 1500, as it was struck heavily by the bubonic plague in the mid-1300s. In lists prior to this, the largest cities were generally in Spain and Italy, however, as time progressed, the largest populations could be found more often in Italy and France. The year 1500 is around the beginning of what we now consider modern history, a time that saw the birth of many European empires and inter-continental globalization.

During the eighteenth century, it is estimated that France's population grew by roughly fifty percent, from 19.7 million in 1700, to 29 million by 1800. In France itself, the 1700s are remembered for the end of King Louis XIV's reign in 1715, the Age of Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. During this century, the scientific and ideological advances made in France and across Europe challenged the leadership structures of the time, and questioned the relationship between monarchial, religious and political institutions and their subjects. France was arguably the most powerful nation in the world in these early years, with the second largest population in Europe (after Russia); however, this century was defined by a number of costly, large-scale conflicts across Europe and in the new North American theater, which saw the loss of most overseas territories (particularly in North America) and almost bankrupted the French crown. A combination of regressive taxation, food shortages and enlightenment ideologies ultimately culminated in the French Revolution in 1789, which brought an end to the Ancien Régime, and set in motion a period of self-actualization.

War and peace

After a volatile and tumultuous decade, in which tens of thousands were executed by the state (most infamously: guillotined), relative stability was restored within France as Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799, and the policies of the revolution became enforced. Beyond France's borders, the country was involved in a series of large scale wars for two almost decades, and the First French Empire eventually covered half of Europe by 1812. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated outright, the empire was dissolved, and the monarchy was restored to France; nonetheless, a large number of revolutionary and Napoleonic reforms remained in effect afterwards, and the ideas had a long-term impact across the globe. France experienced a century of comparative peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars; there were some notable uprisings and conflicts, and the monarchy was abolished yet again, but nothing on the scale of what had preceded or what was to follow. A new overseas colonial empire was also established in the late 1800s, particularly across Africa and Southeast Asia. Through most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, France had the second largest population in Europe (after Russia), however political instability and the economic prioritization of Paris meant that the entire country did not urbanize or industrialize at the same rate as the other European powers. Because of this, Germany and Britain entered the twentieth century with larger populations, and other regions, such as Austria or Belgium, had overtaken France in terms of industrialization; the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War was also a major contributor to this.

World Wars and contemporary France

Coming into the 1900s, France had a population of approximately forty million people (officially 38 million* due to to territorial changes), and there was relatively little growth in the first half of the century. France was comparatively unprepared for a large scale war, however it became one of the most active theaters of the First World War when Germany invaded via Belgium in 1914, with the ability to mobilize over eight million men. By the war's end in 1918, France had lost almost 1.4 million in the conflict, and approximately 300,000 in the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed. Germany invaded France again during the Second World War, and occupied the country from 1940, until the Allied counter-invasion liberated the country during the summer of 1944. France lost around 600,000 people in the course of the war, over half of which were civilians. Following the war's end, the country experienced a baby boom, and the population grew by approximately twenty million people in the next fifty years (compared to just one million in the previous fifty years). Since the 1950s, France's economy quickly grew to be one of the strongest in the world, despite losing the vast majority of its overseas colonial empire by the 1970s. A wave of migration, especially from these former colonies, has greatly contributed to the growth and diversity of France's population today, which stands at over 65 million people in 2020.

The largest Western European city in 1200 was Palermo, with 150 thousand inhabitants. This is a great decrease in the number 150 years previously, where the population was 350 thousand. The city of Cordova also decreased by almost 400 thousand in this time, possibly because of the declining Arabian control and influence in the area. Seville is the third largest city on this list, although it's overall population decreased by ten thousand since 1050. The largest cities are generally in Spain or Italy, although the second largest city on this list is Paris, with 110 thousand inhabitants. In the lists that follow, Paris remains at the top as either the largest (1500 and 1650) or second largest (1330 and 1800) city in Western Europe.

Urban population growth has been constant for several decades in France. Between 1960 and 2023, it rose from 61.88 percent to 81.78 percent. The phenomenon of urbanization was more significant in the 1960s. Indeed, over this period, the rate of the French population living in cities increased by 10 points. The evolution was more weighted over the next 50 years, rising from 71.06 percent in 1970 to 80.98 percent in 2020.An increase in urbanization was accompanied over the same period by a sharp rise in the overall French population, from 55.57 million inhabitants in 1982 to around 68 million in 2024. Paris, an urban giant in France Like in the United Kingdom, the French-style centralized system has led to a high concentration of population around economic, financial, cultural and political centers, all located in the British and French capitals. London and Paris (and its conurbation) are among the largest urban centers on the continent, with Moscow being the most populous. This centralization of power has led to a very heterogenous distribution of population density. The Paris region has a density of more than 1000 inhabitants per km², which is ten times higher than the Haut-de-France region, the second densest region in Metropolitan France.This centralization of power attracts a strong French and foreign workforce. The French capital is by far the most populated city in France. If solely the municipality of Paris is taken into account, it had more than 2 million inhabitants in 2019, which is more than twice as many as in Marseille and four times as many as in Lyon, the country's second and third most populous cities. Future challenges for French cities Access to employment is no longer the only reason to settle in a town. Other factors come into play in the life choices of city dwellers. In 2019, more than 90% of the French estimated that the presence of green areas was important to settle or not in a district. The pollution level of the city was also considered in the choice of the city. In order to address these pollution problems, municipalities must resolve transportation issues on their own territory. Previously the king of the town, the car is increasingly losing ground to public transport in urban areas. Cities like Paris are relying more on public transport. Between 2011 and 2016, RATP and SNCF have built more than 60 kilometers of tramway tracks . Moreover, the construction of additional train and metro lines in the Grand Paris project aimed at better connecting the suburbs to each other without passing through intramural Paris.Making it easier to travel by bicycle is one of the options chosen by many conurbations to relieve congestion in their cities. Since the early 2000s, self-service bicycles have been a great success in France with more than 2400 bicycles available in Toulouse or 4000 in Lyon in 2017. A source of much tension between motorists, municipalities and cyclists, the sharing of the road between 4 and 2 wheelers has, however, been widely developed. In Strasbourg, for example, the municipality had around 1.04 metres of cycle lanes per inhabitant in 2017, the highest rate in France. However, the layout of cycle paths can be perilous and a majority of cyclists in France still feel unsafe on the road.

London was by far the largest urban agglomeration in the United Kingdom in 2025, with an estimated population of *** million people, more than three times as large as Manchester, the UK’s second-biggest urban agglomeration. The agglomerations of Birmingham and Leeds / Bradford had the third and fourth-largest populations, respectively, while the biggest city in Scotland, Glasgow, was the fifth largest. Largest cities in Europe Two cities in Europe had larger urban areas than London, with Istanbul having a population of around **** million and the Russian capital Moscow having a population of over **** million. The city of Paris, located just over 200 miles away from London, was the second-largest city in Europe, with a population of more than **** million people. Paris was followed by London in terms of population size, and then by the Spanish cities of Madrid and Barcelona, at *** million and *** million people, respectively. The Italian capital, Rome, was the next largest city at *** million, followed by Berlin at *** million. London’s population growth Throughout the 1980s, the population of London fluctuated from a high of **** million people in 1981 to a low of **** million inhabitants in 1988. During the 1990s, the population of London increased once again, growing from ****million at the start of the decade to **** million by 1999. London's population has continued to grow since the turn of the century, and despite declining between 2019 and 2021, it reached *** million people in 2023 and is forecast to reach almost *** million by 2047.

With over 21,300 air services, the connection between Paris and Nice was the most served route between the French capital and domestic destinations in 2022. Toulouse was the second-most frequent connection from Paris, with around 19,600 flights connecting the cities in the same year.

Since 1968, the population density in the city of Marseille, located in the south of France, has fluctuated and generally decreased. Indeed, there were about 3,628 inhabitants per square kilometer in 2021, compared with 3,694.7 in 1968. The year in which the population density was highest was 1975, and the year in which it was lowest was 1999.Marseille is the second largest city in France in terms of population, following Paris.

In May 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic was the main concern of Parisians. While the pandemic is one of the top issues for the French in general, Parisians are more concerned than the rest of the population, with ** percent reporting the pandemic to be the major challenge facing Paris. The second most important concern for Parisians was the cleanliness of public spaces, such as streets and parks (** percent), and the third was air quality and pollution. An additional ** percent to considered housing to be a major issue. In January 2022, the capital remained the most expensive city in France to rent an apartment.

The city of Paris in France had an estimated gross domestic product of 757.6 billion Euros in 2021, the most of any European city. Paris was followed by the spanish capital, Madrid, which had a GDP of 237.5 billion Euros, and the Irish capital, Dublin at 230 billion Euros. Milan, in the prosperous north of Italy, had a GDP of 228.4 billion Euros, 65 billion euros larger than the Italian capital Rome, and was the largest non-capital city in terms of GDP in Europe. The engine of Europe Among European countries, Germany had by far the largest economy, with a gross domestic product of over 4.18 trillion Euros. The United Kingdom or France have been Europe's second largest economy since the 1980s, depending on the year, with forecasts suggesting France will overtake the UK going into the 2020s. Germany however, has been the biggest European economy for some time, with five cities (Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt) among the 15 largest European cities by GDP. Europe's largest cities In 2023, Moscow was the largest european city, with a population of nearly 12.7 million. Paris was the largest city in western Europe, with a population of over 11 million, while London was Europe's third-largest city at 9.6 million inhabitants.

Since 1968, the number of inhabitants of the city of Marseille, located in the south of France, has fluctuated and generally decreased. Indeed, there were about 16,000 fewer inhabitants in 2021 than in 1968. The year in which the population was highest was 1975, and the year in which it was lowest was 1999.Marseille is the second largest city in France in terms of population, following Paris.