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Arak, 
Iran
366,442 people lived in Arak in 2025. It is the 1565th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 25th largest in Iran.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and Arak's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Arak grew
Where Arak had 10 people in 1975, it had 21.2 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 373,794 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1980 and 1985.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Arak through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Arak in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Iran · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Iran and its 210 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Tehran). Arak is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Arak covered 59 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 16 km² of it. That is 43 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.5 times its size, and its people are 2.1 times as many.
How to read this: pale is the whole of the city's land; the stronger square inside it is what is actually built on. The three are drawn to the same scale, so a larger square really is more land, and hatching means the year is the UN's projection rather than a count.
Of every 100 people in Iran
Its share of Iran
Of every 1,000 people in Iran in 2025, 4 lived in Arak, which is 366,442 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in Iran; the coloured squares live in Arak. The grey rest live in other cities, in towns or in the countryside.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 1561 Ratlam India366,958
- 1562 Tong'an China366,871
- 1563 Silvassa India366,589
- 1564 Tver Russia366,542
- 1565 Arak366,442
- 1566 Batna Algeria366,415
- 1567 Dusuq Egypt366,123
- 1568 Colina de Laranjeiras Brazil365,960
- 1569 Mission Viejo United States365,221
In Iran, 2025
- 1467 Pishva388,154
- 1492 Bandar Abbas381,008
- 1539 Zanjan370,993
- 1544 Qarchak369,782
- 1565 Arak366,442
- 1599 Qazvin355,865
- 1742 Narmashir329,526
- 1764 Sanandaj325,425
- 1771 Khorramabad324,110
How to read this: the figure in front of a name is where that city stands among the 12,138 cities the UN counted in 2025, and each bar is its people, on one scale per list. Numbers are missing where a city has fewer than 300,000 people and so has no page of its own.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Arak are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Arak publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries