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.

This statistic shows the ten largest cities in the United Kingdom in 2021. In 2021, around 8.78 million people lived in London, making it the largest city in the United Kingdom.

When surveyed in the fourth quarter of 2024, it was found that York was the most popular city in the United Kingdom among residents of the UK. In total, 76 percent of the UK public had a popular opinion of the city, which is famed for its historical architecture.

In 2023, people in Nottingham were exposed to annual average particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations of *** micrograms per cubic meter of air (μg/m³). This was almost double the average PM2.5 concentration observed in Edinburgh, that year. The UK capital – London – had an average PM2.5 concentration of *** μg/m³ in 2023. While this was considerably lower than PM2.5 concentrations in the most polluted capital cities in Europe, levels in London were still above World Health Organization guidelines of five μg/m³.

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).

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 dataset represents ethnic group (19 tick-box level) by highest level qualification, for England and Wales combined. The data are also broken down by age and by sex.

The ethnic group that the person completing the census feels they belong to. This could be based on their culture, family background, identity, or physical appearance. Respondents could choose one out of 19 tick-box response categories, including write-in response options.

Total counts for some population groups may not match between published tables. This is to protect the confidentiality of individuals' data. Population counts have been rounded to the nearest 5 and any counts below 10 are suppressed, this is signified by a 'c' in the data tables.

"Asian Welsh" and "Black Welsh" ethnic groups were included on the census questionnaire in Wales only, these categories were new for 2021.

This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in England and Wales by ethnic group. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021. This dataset shows population counts for usual residents aged 16+ Some people aged 16 years old will not have completed key stage 4 yet on census day, and so did not have the opportunity to record any qualifications on the census.

These estimates are not comparable to Department of Education figures on highest level of attainment because they include qualifications obtained outside England and Wales.

For quality information in general, please read more from here.

Ethnic Group (19 tick-box level)

These are the 19 ethnic group used in this dataset:

• Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh
  • Bangladeshi
  • Chinese
  • Indian
  • Pakistani
  • Other Asian
• Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African
  • African
  • Caribbean
  • Other Black
• Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups
  • White and Asian
  • White and Black African
  • White and Black Caribbean
  • Other Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups
• White
  • English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British
  • Gypsy or Irish Traveller
  • Irish
  • Roma
  • Other White
• Other ethnic group
  • Arab
  • Any other ethnic group

No qualifications

No qualifications

Level 1

Level 1 and entry level qualifications: 1 to 4 GCSEs grade A* to C , Any GCSEs at other grades, O levels or CSEs (any grades), 1 AS level, NVQ level 1, Foundation GNVQ, Basic or Essential Skills

Level 2

5 or more GCSEs (A* to C or 9 to 4), O levels (passes), CSEs (grade 1), School Certification, 1 A level, 2 to 3 AS levels, VCEs, Intermediate or Higher Diploma, Welsh Baccalaureate Intermediate Diploma, NVQ level 2, Intermediate GNVQ, City and Guilds Craft, BTEC First or General Diploma, RSA Diploma

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship

Level 3

2 or more A levels or VCEs, 4 or more AS levels, Higher School Certificate, Progression or Advanced Diploma, Welsh Baccalaureate Advance Diploma, NVQ level 3; Advanced GNVQ, City and Guilds Advanced Craft, ONC, OND, BTEC National, RSA Advanced Diploma

Level 4 +

Degree (BA, BSc), higher degree (MA, PhD, PGCE), NVQ level 4 to 5, HNC, HND, RSA Higher Diploma, BTEC Higher level, professional qualifications (for example, teaching, nursing, accountancy)

Other

Vocational or work-related qualifications, other qualifications achieved in England or Wales, qualifications achieved outside England or Wales (equivalent not stated or unknown)

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.

Context

This data comes for the UK's 2011 census, and contains population estimates by Local Authority and segmented by 5-year age brackets.

Content

The dataset has population estimates for all 324 Local Authorities across the United Kingdom

Acknowledgements

The data comes from the UK Data Service, accessed through the great Nomis service.

Inspiration

It would be great to see similar cities across the UK, or identify interesting age distributions. This dataset can also be combined with other data from the UK Data Service that is indexed at the Local Authority level (using the mnemonic code), available through the Nomis service.

London was by far the most visited city by international tourists in the United Kingdom in 2024. That year, inbound visits to the UK's capital totaled just over ** million, staying marginally lower than in 2019, prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Edinburgh and Manchester followed in the ranking, reporting around *** million and *** million visits, respectively. Overall, the number of inbound visits to the UK reached ** million in 2024 but remained below pre-pandemic levels. What is the leading tourist attraction in London? Tourists visit London for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is its attractions. In 2024, the British Museum was London’s most visited tourist attraction, drawing in approximately *** million visitors. The Natural History Museum in South Kensington and the Tate Modern came next in the ranking, with about *** and *** million visitors, respectively. What is the leading region for summer staycations in the UK? A 'staycation' typically refers to a holiday spent in one's home country rather than abroad. It can also refer to a holiday spent at home involving day trips to local attractions. The leading region for summer staycations in the UK, according to a March 2025 survey, was the South West. Meanwhile, ** percent of respondents said that they intended to visit Scotland during their summer holiday while only *** percent stated that they would like to visit Northern Ireland.

Census 2021 data on religion by highest qualification level, by sex, by age, England and Wales combined. This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in England and Wales by ethnic group. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.

The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practise or have belief in it.
This question was voluntary and the variable includes people who answered the question, including “No religion”, alongside those who chose not to answer this question.

Total counts for some population groups may not match between published tables. This is to protect the confidentiality of individuals' data. Population counts have been rounded to the nearest 5 and any counts below 10 are suppressed, this is signified by a 'c' in the data tables.

This dataset shows population counts for usual residents aged 16 years and over. Some people aged 16 years old will not have completed key stage 4 yet on census day, and so did not have the opportunity to record any qualifications on the census.

These estimates are not comparable to Department of Education figures on highest level of attainment because they include qualifications obtained outside England and Wales.

Quality notes can be found here

Quality information about Education can be found here

Religion

The 8 ‘tickbox’ religious groups are as follows:

• Buddhist
• Christian
• Hindu
• Jewish
• Muslim
• No religion
• Sikh
• Other religion

No qualifications

No qualifications

Level 1

Level 1 and entry level qualifications: 1 to 4 GCSEs grade A* to C , Any GCSEs at other grades, O levels or CSEs (any grades), 1 AS level, NVQ level 1, Foundation GNVQ, Basic or Essential Skills

Level 2

5 or more GCSEs (A* to C or 9 to 4), O levels (passes), CSEs (grade 1), School Certification, 1 A level, 2 to 3 AS levels, VCEs, Intermediate or Higher Diploma, Welsh Baccalaureate Intermediate Diploma, NVQ level 2, Intermediate GNVQ, City and Guilds Craft, BTEC First or General Diploma, RSA Diploma

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship

Level 3

2 or more A levels or VCEs, 4 or more AS levels, Higher School Certificate, Progression or Advanced Diploma, Welsh Baccalaureate Advance Diploma, NVQ level 3; Advanced GNVQ, City and Guilds Advanced Craft, ONC, OND, BTEC National, RSA Advanced Diploma

Level 4 +

Degree (BA, BSc), higher degree (MA, PhD, PGCE), NVQ level 4 to 5, HNC, HND, RSA Higher Diploma, BTEC Higher level, professional qualifications (for example, teaching, nursing, accountancy)

Other

Vocational or work-related qualifications, other qualifications achieved in England or Wales, qualifications achieved outside England or Wales (equivalent not stated or unknown)

This report was released in September 2010. However, recent demographic data is available on the datastore - you may find other datasets on the Datastore useful such as: GLA Population Projections, National Insurance Number Registrations of Overseas Nationals, Births by Birthplace of Mother, Births and Fertility Rates, Office for National Statistics (ONS) Population Estimates

FOCUSONLONDON2010:POPULATIONANDMIGRATION

London is the United Kingdom’s only city region. Its population of 7.75 million is 12.5 per cent of the UK population living on just 0.6 per cent of the land area. London’s average population density is over 4,900 persons per square kilometre, this is ten times that of the second most densely populated region.

Between 2001 and 2009 London’s population grew by over 430 thousand, more than any other region, accounting for over 16 per cent of the UK increase.

This report discusses in detail the population of London including Population Age Structure, Fertility and Mortality, Internal Migration, International Migration, Population Turnover and Churn, and Demographic Projections.

Population and Migration report is the first release of the Focus on London 2010-12 series. Reports on themes such as Income, Poverty, Labour Market, Skills, Health, and Housing are also available.

PRESENTATION:

To access an interactive presentation about population changes in London click the link to see it on Prezi.com

FACTS:

• Top five boroughs for babies born per 10,000 population in 2008-09:
• 1. Newham – 244.4
• 2. Barking and Dagenham – 209.3
• 3. Hackney – 205.7
• 4. Waltham Forest – 202.7
• 5. Greenwich – 196.2
• ...
• 32. Havering – 116.8
• 33. City of London – 47.0
• In 2009, Barnet overtook Croydon as the most populous London borough. Prior to this Croydon had been the largest since 1966
• Population per hectare of land used for Domestic building and gardens is highest in Tower Hamlets
• In 2008-09, natural change (births minus deaths) led to 78,000 more Londoners compared with only 8,000 due to migration. read more about this or click play on the chart below to reveal how regional components of populations change have altered over time.

Police recorded crime figures by Police Force Area and Community Safety Partnership areas (which equate in the majority of instances, to local authorities).

This project aimed to quantitatively understand citizens' attitudes to Emotional AI via national surveys (as described in point 6 "Project Description", see above). We developed a demographically representative survey to gauge citizen attitudes to emotion capture technologies in cities in the UK. The survey introduces the overall topic of emotion profiling with the phrase: ‘We would now like to ask your opinion on use of technologies that try to measure and understand emotions (e.g., through computer analysis of social media posts, facial expression, voice, heart rate, gesture, and other data about the body). Closed-ended questions allowed then to explore 10 different use cases (38 questions in total): security, policing, communications, political campaigning, health, transport, education, toys and robots. For each case, positive and negative themes were tested, by grounding each question in an applied use case. In total, nine themes were explored, (although not across all the use cases to minimise survey fatigue).

CONTEXT Emotional AI (EAI) technologies sense, learn and interact with citizens' emotions, moods, attention and intentions. Using weak and narrow rather than strong AI, machines read and react to emotion via text, images, voice, computer vision and biometric sensing. Concurrently, life in cities is increasingly technologically mediated. Data-driven sensors, actuators, robots and pervasive networking are changing how citizens experience cities, but not always for the better. Citizen needs and perspectives are often ancillary in emerging smart city deployments, resulting in mistrust in new civic infrastructure and its management (e.g. Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs).

We need to avoid these issues repeating as EAI is rolled out in cities. Reading the body is an increasingly prevalent concern, as recent pushback against facial detection and recognition technologies demonstrates. EAI is an extension of this, and as it becomes normalised across the next decade we are concerned about how these systems are governed, social impacts on citizens, and how EAI can be designed in a more ethical manner. In both Japan and UK, we are at a critical juncture where these social, technological and governance structures can be appropriately prepared before mass adoption of EAI, to enable citizens, in all their diversity, to live ethically and well with EAI in cities-as-platforms.

Building on our ESRC/AHRC seminars in Tokyo (2019) that considered cross-cultural ethics and EAI, our research will enable a multi-stakeholder (commerce, security, media) and citizen-led interdisciplinary response to EAI for Japan and UK. While these are two of the most advanced nations in regard to AI, the social contexts and histories from which these technologies emerge differ, providing rich scope for reflection and mutual learning.

AIMS/OBJECTIVES 1. To assess what it means to live ethically and well with EAI in cities in cross-cultural (UK-Japan) commercial, security and media contexts. 2. To map and engage with the ecology of influential actors developing and working with EAI in UK-Japan. 3. To understand commercial activities, intentions and ethical implications regarding EAI in cities, via interviews with industry, case studies, and analysis of patents. 4. To ascertain how EAI might impact security/policing stakeholders, and organisations in the new media ecology, via interviews with these stakeholders and case studies in UK-Japan. 5. To examine governance approaches for collection and use of intimate data about emotions in public spaces to understand how these guide EAI technological developments, and to build a repository of best practice on EAI in cities. 6. To understand diverse citizens' attitudes to EAI via quantitative national surveys and qualitative workshops to co-design citizen-led, creative visions of what it means to live ethically and well with EAI in cities in UK-Japan. 8. To feed our insights to stakeholders shaping usage of EAI in cities in UK-Japan. 9. To advance surveillance studies, new media studies, information technology law, science & technology studies, security & policing studies, computer ethics and affective computing via: 24 international conference papers; a conference on EAI; 12 international, refereed journal papers; a Special Issue on EAI.

APPLICATIONS/BENEFITS We will: - Raise awareness of UK-Japanese stakeholders (technology industry, policymakers, NGOs, security services, urban planners, media outlets, citizens) on how to live ethically and well with EAI in cities, via co-designed, citizen-led, qualitative visions fed into Stakeholder Policy Workshops; a Final Report with clear criteria on ethical usage of EAI in cites; 24 talks with stakeholders; multiple news stories. - Set up a think tank to provide impartial ethical advice on EAI and cross-cultural issues to diverse stakeholders during and after the project. - Advance collaboration between UK-Japan academics, disciplines and stakeholders in EAI.

Number of suicides, suicide rates and median registration delays, by local authority in England and Wales.

The population of the United Kingdom in 2024 was estimated to be approximately 69.3 million, with over 9.6 million people living in South East England. London had the next highest population, at almost 9.1 million people, followed by the North West England at 7.7 million. With the UK's population generally concentrated in England, most English regions have larger populations than the constituent countries of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which had populations of 5.5 million, 3.2 million, and 1.9 million respectively. English counties and cities The United Kingdom is a patchwork of various regional units, within England the largest of these are the regions shown here, which show how London, along with the rest of South East England had around 18 million people living there in this year. The next significant regional units in England are the 47 metropolitan and ceremonial counties. After London, the metropolitan counties of the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, and West Yorkshire were the biggest of these counties, due to covering the large urban areas of Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds respectively. Regional divisions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland The smaller countries that comprise the United Kingdom each have different local subdivisions. Within Scotland these are called council areas, whereas in Wales the main regional units are called unitary authorities. Scotland's largest Council Area by population is that of Glasgow City at over 650,000, while in Wales, it was the Cardiff Unitary Authority at around 384,000. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, has eleven local government districts, the largest of which is Belfast with a population of approxiamtely 352,000.

This statistical report presents a range of information on drug use by adults and children drawn together from a variety of sources. It focuses on England only where possible although some statistics are only readily available at GB or UK level or for England and Wales combined. Some of this is new information whilst some has been published previously. More detail can be found in the source publications which contain a wider range of data and analysis.