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Chelyabinsk, 
Russia
794,411 people lived in Chelyabinsk in 2025. It is the 666th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 12th largest in Russia.
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 Chelyabinsk grew
Where Chelyabinsk had 10 people in 1975, it had 8.3 in 2025, fewer than it started with.
On the UN's projection it will have 750,409 people in 2050. It passed a million 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
Chelyabinsk through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Chelyabinsk in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Russia · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 254 cities in Russia in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Moscow. The ringed dot in colour is Chelyabinsk; 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, Chelyabinsk covered 191 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 47 km² of it. That is 59 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 8 by 8 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 62%, and its people have fallen 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 Russia
Its share of Russia
Of every 1,000 people in Russia in 2025, 6 lived in Chelyabinsk, which is 794,411 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares stand for everyone in Russia, one square for every 1,000th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Chelyabinsk's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 662 Kandahar Afghanistan799,015
- 663 Cuiabá Brazil798,772
- 664 Qinhuangdao China797,748
- 665 Arusha Tanzania795,744
- 666 Chelyabinsk794,411
- 667 Jincheng China794,234
- 668 Oyo Nigeria793,241
- 669 Irbid Jordan792,470
- 670 Dnipro Ukraine792,115
In Russia, 2025
- 530 Omsk975,485
- 543 Samara955,599
- 589 Ufa880,583
- 591 Voronezh879,892
- 666 Chelyabinsk794,411
- 676 Krasnodar783,125
- 690 Saratov771,355
- 749 Makhachkala717,618
- 829 Volgograd655,020
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 Chelyabinsk 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 Chelyabinsk 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