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Arequipa, 
Peru
977,496 people lived in Arequipa in 2025. It is the 529th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 2nd largest in Peru.
Like every city on this site, Arequipa is counted as a built-up area seen from above rather than as a city government's territory. Why that changes the number.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Arequipa grew
Where Arequipa had 10 people in 1975, it had 37.1 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.1 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes a million people between 2025 and 2030.
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
Arequipa through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Arequipa in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Peru · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 43 cities in Peru in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Lima. The ringed dot in colour is Arequipa; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Arequipa covered 167 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 39 km² of it. That is 40 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 4.6 times its size, and its people are 3.7 times as many.
How to read this: the outer pale square stands for all the land the city covers, and the solid square inside it for the part with buildings, roads and the like on it. All three squares share a scale, so you can compare them by eye. A hatched one is a year the UN has projected.
Of every 100 people in Peru
Its share of Peru
Of every 100 people in Peru in 2025, 3 lived in Arequipa, which is 977,496 people.
How to read this: shrink Peru to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Arequipa; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 525 Jambi Indonesia980,534
- 526 Tainan Taiwan979,987
- 527 Zhuzhou China979,244
- 528 Pekalongan Indonesia978,519
- 529 Arequipa977,496
- 530 Omsk Russia975,485
- 531 Guilin China973,970
- 532 Malanje Angola973,086
- 533 Glasgow United Kingdom970,320
In Peru, 2025
- 32 Lima10,580,241
- 529 Arequipa977,496
- 549 Trujillo949,018
- 868 Chiclayo620,622
- 957 Caleta Sanitaria572,154
- 1133 Cusco490,968
- 1177 Piura471,521
- 1179 Huancayo470,685
- 1635 Chimbote350,281
How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Arequipa 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 Arequipa 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