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Balıkesir, 
Türkiye
328,080 people lived in Balıkesir in 2025. It is the 1753rd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 29th largest in Türkiye.
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 Balıkesir'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 Balıkesir grew
Where Balıkesir had 10 people in 1975, it had 32 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 357,409 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2005 and 2010.
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
Balıkesir through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Balıkesir in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Türkiye · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 177 cities in Türkiye in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Istanbul. The ringed dot in colour is Balıkesir; 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, Balıkesir covered 40 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 8.8 km² of it. That is 27 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.8 times its size, and its people are 3.2 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in Türkiye
Its share of Türkiye
Of every 1,000 people in Türkiye in 2025, 4 lived in Balıkesir, which is 328,080 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in Türkiye; the coloured squares live in Balıkesir. 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
- 1749 Shangyu District China328,545
- 1750 Ya'an China328,287
- 1751 Tezpur India328,217
- 1752 Puri India328,196
- 1753 Balıkesir328,080
- 1754 Tacna Peru327,582
- 1755 Baoshan China327,416
- 1756 Girga Egypt327,081
- 1757 Xiangtan China326,965
In Türkiye, 2025
- 1518 İskenderun375,056
- 1551 Sivas368,209
- 1640 Sakarya348,302
- 1686 Çerkezköy338,995
- 1753 Balıkesir328,080
- 1794 Trabzon320,468
- 2034 Osmaniye286,108
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 Balıkesir 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 Balıkesir 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