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Birmingham, 
United Kingdom
2,631,757 people lived in Birmingham in 2025. It is the 191st largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 2nd largest in the United Kingdom.
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 Birmingham'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 Birmingham grew
Count 10 people in Birmingham in 1975 and the same count gives 11.7 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 2.8 million people in 2050.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: each column is one of the UN's five-yearly estimates, 1975 through 2050, and taller means more people. Where a column is hatched the year has not happened yet. The strip under the columns is the UN's own confidence in each figure, palest where it is least sure; where it is blank the city was not on the list at all.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Birmingham through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Birmingham in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
United Kingdom · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 150 cities in the United Kingdom in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being London. The ringed dot in colour is Birmingham; 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, Birmingham covered 671 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 178 km² of it. That is 68 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 8 by 8 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 37%, and its people have grown by 17%.
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 the United Kingdom
Its share of the United Kingdom
Of every 100 people in the United Kingdom in 2025, 4 lived in Birmingham, which is 2.6 million people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in the United Kingdom; the coloured squares live in Birmingham. 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
- 187 Montreal Canada2,668,723
- 188 Izmir Türkiye2,650,237
- 189 Changzhou China2,649,836
- 190 Tel Aviv Israel2,642,872
- 191 Birmingham2,631,757
- 192 Kiev Ukraine2,614,581
- 193 Wuxi China2,613,100
- 194 Milan Italy2,599,022
- 195 Caracas Venezuela2,576,666
In the United Kingdom, 2025
- 33 London10,416,420
- 191 Birmingham2,631,757
- 196 Manchester2,535,427
- 418 Liverpool1,227,470
- 480 Leeds1,065,607
- 533 Glasgow970,320
- 700 Newcastle upon Tyne760,969
- 835 Nottingham649,610
- 875 Bristol615,703
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 Birmingham 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 Birmingham 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