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Benghazi, 
Libya
630,479 people lived in Benghazi in 2025. It is the 860th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 2nd largest in Libya.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Benghazi grew
Count 10 people in Benghazi in 1975 and the same count gives 28.5 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 839,989 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1975 and 1980.
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
Benghazi through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Benghazi in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Libya · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 14 cities in Libya in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Tripoli. The ringed dot in colour is Benghazi; 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, Benghazi covered 157 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 36 km² of it. That is 57 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 8 by 8 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.4 times its size, and its people are 2.9 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 Libya
Its share of Libya
Of every 100 people in Libya in 2025, 8 lived in Benghazi, which is 630,479 people.
How to read this: 100 squares stand for everyone in Libya, one square for every 100th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Benghazi's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 856 Bordeaux France631,551
- 857 Yuxi China631,209
- 858 Ajmer India631,176
- 859 Qujing China630,828
- 860 Benghazi630,479
- 861 Seeb Oman630,072
- 862 Lokoja Nigeria629,547
- 863 Lviv Ukraine627,280
- 864 Chiang Mai Thailand626,629
In Libya, 2025
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 Benghazi 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 Benghazi 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