The population of London reached over **** million in 2024, an increase of almost *** million people when compared with the early 1980s. Throughout the 1980s, the population of the United Kingdom's capital grew at a relatively slow rate, before accelerating to a much faster rate in the 1990s. London is by far the largest city / urban agglomeration in the United Kingdom, more than three times larger than the next largest cities of Manchester and Birmingham. London’s forecasted population is expected to continue growing at much the same pace it has been growing since the mid-1990s and reach almost *** million by 2042. London boroughs As of 2024, the London borough with the highest population was Croydon, at approximately *******, followed by Barnet at *******. Overall, London is divided into 33 different boroughs, with London's historic center, the City of London, having by far the smallest population, at just ******. Residents of the City of London, however, have the highest average median weekly earnings among all of London's boroughs, at ***** pounds per week, compared with just *** pounds per week in Redbridge, the lowest average weekly earnings among London boroughs. While the overall unemployment rate for London was 5** percent in early 2025, this ranged from ****percent in Newham, to just *** percent in Richmond upon Thames.
Economic imbalance Aside from being the UK's largest city in terms of population, London is also undoubtedly the UK's cultural, political and economic center. As of 2023, the GDP of Greater London was approximately *** billion British pounds, almost a quarter of the UK's overall GDP. In the same year, GDP per person in London was ****** pounds compared with the UK average of ****** pounds. Additionally, productivity in London is far higher than the UK average. As measured by output per hour worked, London was **** percent more productive than the rest of the UK.

Between 1500 and 1800, London grew to be the largest city in Western Europe, with its population growing almost 22 times larger in this period. London would eventually overtake Constantinople as Europe's largest in the 1700s, before becoming the largest city in the world (ahead of Beijing) in the early-1800s.

The most populous cities in this period were the capitals of European empires, with Paris, Amsterdam, and Vienna growing to become the largest cities, alongside the likes of Lisbon and Madrid in Iberia, and Naples or Venice in Italy. Many of northwestern Europe's largest cities in 1500 would eventually be overtaken by others not shown here, such as the port cities of Hamburg, Marseilles or Rotterdam, or more industrial cities such as Berlin, Birmingham, and Munich.

Annual historical data for UK residents by broad country of birth and citizenship groups, broken down by UK country, local authority, unitary authority, metropolitan and London boroughs, and counties.

National and subnational mid-year population estimates for the UK and its constituent countries by administrative area, age and sex (including components of population change, median age and population density).

In 2024, the population of the United Kingdom reached 69.3 million, compared with 68.5 million in 2023. The UK population has more than doubled since 1871 when just under 31.5 million lived in the UK and has grown by around 10.4 million since the start of the twenty-first century. For most of the twentieth century, the UK population steadily increased, with two noticeable drops in population occurring during World War One (1914-1918) and in World War Two (1939-1945). Demographic trends in postwar Britain After World War Two, Britain and many other countries in the Western world experienced a 'baby boom,' with a postwar peak of 1.02 million live births in 1947. Although the number of births fell between 1948 and 1955, they increased again between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, with more than one million people born in 1964. Since 1964, however, the UK birth rate has fallen from 18.8 births per 1,000 people to a low of just 10.2 in 2020. As a result, the UK population has gotten significantly older, with the country's median age increasing from 37.9 years in 2001 to 40.7 years in 2022. What are the most populated areas of the UK? The vast majority of people in the UK live in England, which had a population of 58.6 million people in 2024. By comparison, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had populations of 5.5 million, 3.2 million, and 1.9 million, respectively. Within England, South East England had the largest population, at over 9.6 million, followed by the UK's vast capital city of London, at almost 9.1 million. London is far larger than any other UK city in terms of urban agglomeration, with just four other cities; Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, boasting populations that exceed one million people.

According to the 2021 Census, London was the most ethnically diverse region in England and Wales – 63.2% of residents identified with an ethnic minority group.

This project examines the crucial role of family and household in the social and economic transformations that took place in London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Population growth, immigration, urbanisation, and commercialisation produced new patterns of sociability, gender relations, employment, and domestic lifestyle. The family was central to all these developments, but has been little studied in detail. The project will reconstruct and analyse the dense matrix of families, households, properties, and buildings in sample areas of the capital, and trace their evolution over time, gaining new insights into social structures and the agents and circumstances of change.

This dataset brings together all 698 known references to ‘Black’ or possibly Black African heritage people or groups in records of London criminal justice (1720-1841). Each entry includes references to primary sources mentioning the person(s), including in the Old Bailey Proceedings, Ordinary’s Accounts, and Middlesex Criminal Registers. Individuals are trial witnesses, victims, defendants, and people mentioned in passing during testimony. For each entry, a confidence level is offered by the authors, as a person’s ethnicity cannot always be determined with certainty. Evidence for making that judgment is provided. This dataset is useful for anyone interested in Black history in Britain, Black people and justice, or Black London during the age of enslavement.

Significant background material is available on the Old Bailey Online website, which provides additional context for these records. The authors also recommend the following works:

* Kathleen Chater. Untold Histories: Black People in England and Wales during the Period of the British Slave Trade, c. 1660-1807 (Manchester, 2011).
* Norma Myers, Reconstructing the Black Past (Frank Cass, 1996).
* Marika Sherwood. ‘Blacks in the Gordon Riots’, History Today, vol. 47 (1997), 24-28.

Each record includes details on the name of the Black individual(s), as well as information on up to three sources in which he/she/they have been identified, and an indication by the authors on the likelihood the person is actually Black.

Each entry has 17 columns of data, all of which are described in full in the ReadMe.txt file.

Although the Black Death peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1351, plague was almost always present in Britain for the next four centuries. In most years, plague was a dormant threat that affected very few people, and diseases such as smallpox and influenza were much more widespread; however, bubonic plague was prone to outbreaks that could decimate populations in a few short years. In London, plague outbreaks occurred every few decades, usually with death tolls in the tens of thousands. The duration and severity of these epidemics varied, sometimes having high death tolls but subsiding quickly, while others had relatively lower death tolls but could last for a number of years. As London's population and density also grew drastically during this period, plague affected the city differently in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Great Plague of London The final major plague epidemic observed in Britain took place in 1665 and 1666. It became known as the "Great Plague" as it was the last of its kind in Britain, and its death toll eclipsed all other epidemics in the preceding century (although it was much smaller than that of the Black Death). The plague lasted for eighteen months, and had a reported death toll of more than 70,000 in this time; although modern historians estimate that the actual death toll exceeded 100,000. At its peak in September 1665, it is reported that there were more than 7,000 deaths per week, although this may have also been much higher due to the limited records kept at the time. Another reason for the lack of accurate records relating to this epidemic is because of the Great Fire of London in 1666. The fire started on September 02. 1666, and destroyed almost all of the city within the walls, leaving thousands homeless. Historians continue to debate the fire's significance, some citing that it destroyed the unsanitary dwellings where infected rats lived and drove them from the city, while others claim that the timings were purely coincidental and that the epidemic had already begun to subside in February.

This project investigated the character and development of London’s eastern suburb by examining the life of the inhabitants of the extra-mural parishes of St Botolph Aldgate and Holy Trinity Minories from c.1550-c.1700. Covering just under 80 acres running south from the parish of St Botolph Bishopsgate to the Thames, this area experienced a population explosion during the early modern period, from c.3,500 inhabitants in 1540, over 11,000 by 1650, to nearly 20,000 by 1700. The area offers a population with a unique range of social and economic experiences which allow the greatest possible scope for studying suburban living in early modern London. Moreover, it also offers an unprecedented array of sources, including parish registers, records of poor relief, numerous taxation and household listings, and the observations of the parish clerks of St Botolph.

The project had three main aims. The first involves a full family reconstitution and demographic analysis of the area’s parish registers - the largest reconstitution yet attempted from English registers. Relevant issues here are seasonality of mortality across the period, and the impact of maternal feeding practices. The second area of research involved study of the status, wealth and arrangement of the domestic units within the two parishes. Major themes here concern the levels of poverty and overseas immigration, the impact of London’s growth on existing social structures and whether communities of wealth congregated in different areas of the suburb. Finally, the third project strand concerned the topographical development of the area, specifically the expansion of its housing stock. Subjects of interest here included the residence patterns and spatial characteristics of the population, variables such as housing quality and amenity, and rental values.

It is estimated that the cities of Cordova (modern-day Córdoba) and Palermo were the largest cities in Europe in 1050, and had between fifteen and twenty times the population of most other entries in this graph, Despite this the cities of Cordova (the capital city of the Umayyad caliphate, who controlled much of the Iberian peninsula from the seventh to eleventh centuries), and Palermo (another Arab-controlled capital in Southern Europe) were still the only cities in Western Europe with a population over one hundred thousand people, closely followed by Seville. It is also noteworthy to point out that the five largest cities on this list were importing trading cities, in modern day Spain or Italy, although the largest cities become more northern and western European in later lists (1200, 1330, 1500, 1650 and 1800). In 1050, todays largest Western European cities, London and Paris, had just twenty-five and twenty thousand inhabitants respectively.

The period of European history (and much of world history) between 500 and 1500 is today known as the 'Dark Ages'. Although the term 'Dark Ages' was originally applied to the lack of literature and arts, it has since been applied to the lack or scarcity of recorded information from this time. Because of these limitations, much information about this time is still being debated today.

Supplementary material 1 from: Reyes-Puig C, Bittencourt-Silva G, Torres-Sánchez M, Wilkinson M, Streicher J, Maddock S, Kotharambath R, Müller H, Angiolani Larrea F, Almeida-Reinoso D, Ron S, Cisneros-Heredia D (2019) Rediscovery of the Endangered Carchi Andean Toad, Rhaebo colomai (Hoogmoed, 1985), in Ecuador, with comments on its conservation status and extinction risk. Check List 15(3): 415-419. https://doi.org/10.15560/15.3.415

The crime rate in London was 106.4 crime offences per thousand people for the 2024/25 reporting year, compared with 105.8 in the previous year. Between 2015/16 and 2019/20, the crime rate in the UK capital increased in every reporting year. The sudden drop in 2019/20 was due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing a sharp reduction in certain types of crime, such as robbery and theft. Crime patterns in the capital Overall there were 951,803 crimes reported by the police in London in 2024/25, compared with 938,020 in the previous reporting year. Types of crime that have increased recently include violent crimes, shoplifting, and theft from the person offences. One positive is that the number of homicide offences in London has fallen to much lower levels than seen in the late 2010s. Additionally, the Metropolitan Police force area has a lower crime rate than many of the UK's other major police forces, such as West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, and South Yorkshire. Police recruitment drive ends era of cuts  The rise in crime in London happened alongside a decline in both personnel and funding for the London Metropolitan Police. Compared with 2010 for example, there were around 3,000 fewer police officers in 2018, while annual funding was reduced to around 3.3 billion pounds between 2013/14 and 2018/19, compared with 3.62 billion in 2012/13. These cuts were due to the policy of austerity that was implemented by the UK government during that time period, but this has recently been replaced by pledges to increase spending and to recruit more police. In 2024/25, the budget for the Metropolitan Police was over five billion pounds, while the number of officers in 2024 increased to around 35,310.

This table contains 13 series, with data for years 1926 - 1960 (not all combinations necessarily have data for all years), and was last released on 2000-02-18. This table contains data described by the following dimensions (Not all combinations are available): Geography (13 items: Canada; Newfoundland and Labrador; Prince Edward Island; Nova Scotia ...).

In 1800, the population of the area of modern-day Bangladesh was estimated to be just over 19 million, a figure which would rise steadily throughout the 19th century, reaching over 26 million by 1900. At the time, Bangladesh was the eastern part of the Bengal region in the British Raj, and had the most-concentrated Muslim population in the subcontinent's east. At the turn of the 20th century, the British colonial administration believed that east Bengal was economically lagging behind the west, and Bengal was partitioned in 1905 as a means of improving the region's development. East Bengal then became the only Muslim-majority state in the eastern Raj, which led to socioeconomic tensions between the Hindu upper classes and the general population. Bengal Famine During the Second World War, over 2.5 million men from across the British Raj enlisted in the British Army and their involvement was fundamental to the war effort. The war, however, had devastating consequences for the Bengal region, as the famine of 1943-1944 resulted in the deaths of up to three million people (with over two thirds thought to have been in the east) due to starvation and malnutrition-related disease. As the population boomed in the 1930s, East Bengal's mismanaged and underdeveloped agricultural sector could not sustain this growth; by 1942, food shortages spread across the region, millions began migrating in search of food and work, and colonial mismanagement exacerbated this further. On the brink of famine in early-1943, authorities in India called for aid and permission to redirect their own resources from the war effort to combat the famine, however these were mostly rejected by authorities in London. While the exact extent of each of these factors on causing the famine remains a topic of debate, the general consensus is that the British War Cabinet's refusal to send food or aid was the most decisive. Food shortages did not dissipate until late 1943, however famine deaths persisted for another year. Partition to independence Following the war, the movement for Indian independence reached its final stages as the process of British decolonization began. Unrest between the Raj's Muslim and Hindu populations led to the creation of two separate states in1947; the Muslim-majority regions became East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now Pakistan), separated by the Hindu-majority India. Although East Pakistan's population was larger, power lay with the military in the west, and authorities grew increasingly suppressive and neglectful of the eastern province in the following years. This reached a tipping point when authorities failed to respond adequately to the Bhola cyclone in 1970, which claimed over half a million lives in the Bengal region, and again when they failed to respect the results of the 1970 election, in which the Bengal party Awami League won the majority of seats. Bangladeshi independence was claimed the following March, leading to a brutal war between East and West Pakistan that claimed between 1.5 and three million deaths in just nine months. The war also saw over half of the country displaced, widespread atrocities, and the systematic rape of hundreds of thousands of women. As the war spilled over into India, their forces joined on the side of Bangladesh, and Pakistan was defeated two weeks later. An additional famine in 1974 claimed the lives of several hundred thousand people, meaning that the early 1970s was one of the most devastating periods in the country's history. Independent Bangladesh In the first decades of independence, Bangladesh's political hierarchy was particularly unstable and two of its presidents were assassinated in military coups. Since transitioning to parliamentary democracy in the 1990s, things have become comparatively stable, although political turmoil, violence, and corruption are persistent challenges. As Bangladesh continues to modernize and industrialize, living standards have increased and individual wealth has risen. Service industries have emerged to facilitate the demands of Bangladesh's developing economy, while manufacturing industries, particularly textiles, remain strong. Declining fertility rates have seen natural population growth fall in recent years, although the influx of Myanmar's Rohingya population due to the displacement crisis has seen upwards of one million refugees arrive in the country since 2017. In 2020, it is estimated that Bangladesh has a population of approximately 165 million people.

This research project examined the experiences of Irish lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people living in London. There is a long history of Irish migration to the UK, particularly London. This has coincided historically with many Irish LGBT people feeling compelled to emigrate in search of a more supportive social climate. The appeal of global cities to LGBT people has long been acknowledged. Metropolitan centres are associated with tolerance of sexual diversity and established queer communities. This study will explore Irish queer migrants' reasons for moving to London and experiences there. The research questions will focus on notions of home, identity, belonging, familial relationships and subjectivity. By exploring the relationship between sexuality, ethnicity and diaspora, the study intended to uncover the ways in which contemporary sexual citizenship, migration and queer imaginaries of the metropolis are mutually implicated in complex ways. A qualitative dataset is produced containing interviews with 38 Irish LGBT participants who have been living in London for at least five years. In addition to generating new theoretical work on sexuality and migration, the research findings will be used to inform policy and debate regarding processes of social exclusion.

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.

The number of overseas tourist visits to London, United Kingdom continued to grow in 2024, following a sharp drop in 2021 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite this increase, inbound arrivals in the UK's capital remained below pre-pandemic levels, totaling ***** million in 2024. In the same year, inbound tourist visits to the UK totaled nearly ** million. London leading the way in Europe London’s contribution to inbound tourism in the United Kingdom is significant, with the UK’s capital accounting for around ** percent of international tourist arrivals in the country in 2024. This was more than other leading European destinations, such as Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin. Those visiting the UK capital also made a significant contribution to the local economy, with expenditure of international visitors in London peaking in 2024, with inbound tourists spending over ** billion British pounds that year. However, this was not reflected in business travel spending in the city, which remained below the figure recorded in 2019. London’s visitor attractions As the largest city in the UK, London is home to some of the country's most iconic visitor attractions. These range from government-sponsored museums, such as the British Museum, to the Tower of London and the ZSL London Zoo. In 2024, the ************** was the most visited tourist attraction in London. Meanwhile, the Natural History Museum ranked second.

Age profile of register compared to invited population.