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Cities · Guinea-Bissau · capital
Bissau, 
Guinea-Bissau
612,643 people lived in Bissau in 2025. It is the 884th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Guinea-Bissau, where it is the capital.
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 Bissau grew
Count 10 people in Bissau in 1975 and the same count gives 79 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 782,910 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1995 and 2000.
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
Bissau through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Bissau in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Guinea-Bissau · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 3 cities in Guinea-Bissau in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is Bissau; 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, Bissau covered 84 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 19 km² of it. That is 31 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.9 times its size, and its people are 7.9 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 Guinea-Bissau
Its share of Guinea-Bissau
Of every 100 people in Guinea-Bissau in 2025, 27 lived in Bissau, which is 612,643 people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Guinea-Bissau; the coloured squares live in Bissau. 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
- 880 Lipa Philippines614,898
- 881 Salta Argentina613,956
- 882 Suining China613,678
- 883 Uberlândia Brazil613,434
- 884 Bissau612,643
- 885 Rajmahal India612,055
- 886 Al Ismailiya Egypt612,046
- 887 Hanover Germany611,288
- 888 Cipanas Indonesia610,177
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 Bissau 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 Bissau 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