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Celaya, 
Mexico
372,139 people lived in Celaya in 2025. It is the 1534th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 36th largest in Mexico.
Like every city on this site, Celaya is counted as a built-up area seen from above rather than as a city government's territory. Why that changes the number.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Celaya grew
Count 10 people in Celaya in 1980 and the same count gives 58.4 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 418,213 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1995 and 2000. The UN first counts it as a city in 1980, when it passed 50,000 people.
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
Celaya through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Celaya in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Mexico · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Mexico and its 186 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Mexico City). Celaya is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Celaya covered 64 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 19 km² of it. That is 52 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1980, its built-up land has grown to 2.6 times its size, and its people are 5.8 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 Mexico
Its share of Mexico
Of every 1,000 people in Mexico in 2025, 3 lived in Celaya, which is 372,139 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in Mexico; the coloured squares live in Celaya. 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
- 1530 Khagaria India372,707
- 1531 Abonnema Nigeria372,654
- 1532 Ivanovo Russia372,200
- 1533 Oita Japan372,190
- 1534 Celaya372,139
- 1535 Oyigbo Nigeria371,913
- 1536 Liuyang China371,661
- 1537 Pasto Colombia371,637
- 1538 Taizhou China371,055
In Mexico, 2025
- 1219 Irapuato456,628
- 1379 Mazatlán409,143
- 1408 Tepic401,753
- 1529 La Paz372,988
- 1534 Celaya372,139
- 1733 Nuevo Laredo331,195
- 1760 Ciudad Obregón326,226
- 1769 Uruapan324,219
- 1781 Ciudad Victoria322,403
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 Celaya are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1980 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 Celaya 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