This dataset provides a comprehensive overview of the population statistics for 800 largest cities in the world, detailing the population estimates for the years 2023 and 2024. Additionally, it includes the calculated growth rate for each city over this period. This dataset can be instrumental for urban studies, demographic analysis, and economic research. Columns Description • City: The name of the city. • Country: The country where the city is located. • Population (2024): Estimated population of the city for the year 2024. • Population (2023): Estimated population of the city for the year 2023. • Growth Rate: The rate of population growth from 2023 to 2024. This is calculated as the difference between the 2024 and 2023 populations, divided by the 2023 population.

The below dataset shows the top 800 biggest cities in the world and their populations in the year 2024. It also tells us which country and continent each city is in, and their rank based on population size. Here are the top ten cities:

• Tokyo, Japan - in Asia, with 37,115,035 people.
• Delhi, India - in Asia, with 33,807,403 people.
• Shanghai, China - in Asia, with 29,867,918 people.
• Dhaka, Bangladesh - in Asia, with 23,935,652 people.
• Sao Paulo, Brazil - in South America, with 22,806,704 people.
• Cairo, Egypt - in Africa, with 22,623,874 people.
• Mexico City, Mexico - in North America, with 22,505,315 people.
• Beijing, China - in Asia, with 22,189,082 people.
• Mumbai, India - in Asia, with 21,673,149 people.
• Osaka, Japan - in Asia, with 18,967,459 people.

World Cities provides a basemap layer for the cities of the world. The cities include national capitals, provincial capitals, major population centers, and landmark cities. Population estimates are provided for those cities listed in open source data from the United Nations Statistics Division, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, and U.S. Census Bureau.

All cities with a population > 1000 or seats of adm div (ca 80.000)Sources and ContributionsSources : GeoNames is aggregating over hundred different data sources. Ambassadors : GeoNames Ambassadors help in many countries. Wiki : A wiki allows to view the data and quickly fix error and add missing places. Donations and Sponsoring : Costs for running GeoNames are covered by donations and sponsoring.Enrichment:add country name

Source

The data file is from https://simplemaps.com/data/world-cities.

About Dataset

All cities with a population seat of adm div (ca 80.000)Sources and Contributions Sources: GeoNames is aggregating over hundred different data sources. Ambassadors: GeoNames Ambassadors help in many countries. Wiki: A wiki allows you to view the data, quickly fix errors, and add missing places. Donations and Sponsoring: Costs for running GeoNames are covered by donations and sponsoring.enrichment:add country name

Context

Name Country Code Country Name Timezone Population Latitude Longitude Acknowledgments These data come from Maxmind.com and have not been altered. The original source can be found by clicking here

Additionally, Reference https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/ Attributions https://www.geonames.org/about.html

List of the world's major cities (above 15,000 inhabitants)

This dataset, worldcities.csv is a comprehensive collection of geographic and demographic data for 44,383 cities worldwide, spanning 127+ countries. Sourced independently, it includes 10 columns: city, city_ascii, lat, lng, country, iso2, iso3, admin_name, capital, and population. With India (15%) and the US (11%) leading the pack, and cities like Tokyo (37.7M) and Jakarta (33.8M) topping population charts, it’s a goldmine of real-world coordinates (lat: -54.9 to 81.7, lng: -180 to 179) and stats. I used this as a foundation to generate synthetic geo-tagged tweet data (geo_gpt_tweets_8.2-10.json), pulling lat, lng, and country to anchor 1,000 GPT-related posts in realistic locations—achieving an 82% real-world chaos vibe. Perfect for mapping, clustering, or seeding your own geo-based projects!

As of 2025, Tokyo-Yokohama in Japan was the largest world urban agglomeration, with 37 million people living there. Delhi ranked second with more than 34 million, with Shanghai in third with more than 30 million inhabitants.

Context

This dataset is meant to be used with other datasets that have features like country and city but no latitude/longitude. It is simply a list of cities in the world. Being able to put cities on a map will help people tell their stories more effectively. Another way to think about it is that you can use this make more pretty graphs!

Content

Fields:

• city
• region
• country
• population
• latitude
• longitude

Acknowledgements

These data come from Maxmind.com and have not been altered. The original source can be found by clicking here

Additionally, the Maxmind sharing license has been included.

Inspiration

I wanted to analyze a dataset and make a map, but I was only given a city name without any latitude or longotude coordinates. I found this dataset very helpful and I hoe you do too!

GLA 2016 - World cities data.

Based on a collection of estimates, over the past 9,000 years, there have been at least 48 cities with a claim to the title of "the world's most populous city". While these can be found on four separate continents, the majority are concentrated in three major regions; 12 of these cities were in present-day Iraq or Syria (then-Mesopotamia), nine were in China, and seven in Egypt. Additionally, many of these cities were found across the Mediterranean, not only during Antiquity (Alexandria, Carthage, and Rome), but also during the Middle Ages (Constantinople, Cordova, and Fez), highlighting the economic significance of this region throughout history.

Many of the older entries in this list are now just archeological sites, although several have been continuously inhabited for millennia, such as Luoyang and Xi'an in China, which both have populations of several million in 2022. It may also be possible that the first entry, Jericho, is the world's oldest, continuously inhabited settlement, although this is a topic of debate.

The graph shows the proportion of the population in cities worldwide from 1985 to 2050. **** percent of the world's population lived in cities in the year of 2015. This percentage is forecasted to grow to **** percent in the year 2050.

Actual value and historical data chart for World Population In The Largest City Percent Of Urban Population

In 2025, approximately 23 million people lived in the São Paulo metropolitan area, making it the biggest in Latin America and the Caribbean and the sixth most populated in the world. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country. The second place for the region was Mexico City with 22.75 million inhabitants. Brazil's cities Brazil is home to two large metropolises, only counting the population within the city limits, São Paulo had approximately 11.45 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro around 6.21 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 88 percent of inhabitants living in cities. Mexico City Mexico City's metropolitan area ranks sevenths in the ranking of most populated cities in the world. Founded over the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in 1521 after the Spanish conquest as the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the city still stands as one of the most important in Latin America. Nevertheless, the preeminent economic, political, and cultural position of Mexico City has not prevented the metropolis from suffering the problems affecting the rest of the country, namely, inequality and violence. Only in 2023, the city registered a crime incidence of 52,723 reported cases for every 100,000 inhabitants and around 24 percent of the population lived under the poverty line.

The data is from:

https://simplemaps.com/data/world-cities

We're proud to offer a simple, accurate and up-to-date database of the world's cities and towns. We've built it from the ground up using authoritative sources such as the NGIA, US Geological Survey, US Census Bureau, and NASA.

Our database is:

• Up-to-date: It was last refreshed in July 2021.
• Comprehensive: Over 4 million unique cities and towns from every country in the world (about 41 thousand in basic database).
• Accurate: Cleaned and aggregated from official sources. Includes latitude and longitude coordinates.
• Simple: A single CSV file, concise field names, only one entry per city.

About this Dataset

This is the most accurate and complete database of major places on earth

defined as

('continent','country','state', 'city','town','region','county', 'village')

Data fields

country_code, latitude,longitude, name, (multi-lingual) place_id, parent_place_id, linked_place_id, importance, geometry_sector, rank_address, rank_search, osm_id, osm_type, class, type, admin_level, address, extratags, area, wikipedia, token_info, housenumber, postcode

sample data available at https://4.ipv6.systems/data/basic_places.csv.zip

Category

Location Lists

Keywords

cities of world,world locations,world places,places,coordinates

Row Count

1614395

Price

$50.00

This data file includes city population and geolocation data (lat, long, timezone) for the top 15000 cities of the world. It was originally downloaded in September 2017 from http://www.geonames.org/.

Population in largest city in United States was reported at 19034018 in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Population in largest city - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on November of 2025.

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.