Topics
Bristol, 
United Kingdom
615,703 people lived in Bristol in 2025. It is the 875th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 9th largest in the United Kingdom.
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 Bristol grew
Count 10 people in Bristol in 1975 and the same count gives 13.1 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 635,268 people in 2050.
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
Bristol through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Bristol 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 Bristol; 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, Bristol covered 133 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 35 km² of it. That is 56 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 40%, and its people have grown by 31%.
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 the United Kingdom
Its share of the United Kingdom
Of every 1,000 people in the United Kingdom in 2025, 9 lived in Bristol, which is 615,703 people.
How to read this: shrink the United Kingdom to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Bristol; 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
- 871 Larkana Pakistan618,408
- 872 Malegaon India618,133
- 873 West Palm Beach United States617,035
- 874 Farrukhabad India615,831
- 875 Bristol615,703
- 876 Ambala India615,565
- 877 Reynosa Mexico615,168
- 878 Ribeirao Preto Brazil615,090
- 879 Mar del Plata Argentina614,979
In the United Kingdom, 2025
- 480 Leeds1,065,607
- 533 Glasgow970,320
- 700 Newcastle upon Tyne760,969
- 835 Nottingham649,610
- 875 Bristol615,703
- 1001 Sheffield549,695
- 1046 Leicester530,264
- 1058 Edinburgh521,784
- 1137 Portsmouth488,385
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 Bristol 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 Bristol 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