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Chengdu, 
China
6,139,874 people lived in Chengdu in 2025. It is the 64th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 12th largest in China.
Like every city on this site, Chengdu 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 Chengdu grew
Count 10 people in Chengdu in 1975 and the same count gives 21.8 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 5.2 million people in 2050. It passed five million people between 1995 and 2000.
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
Chengdu through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Chengdu in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
China · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: China and its 2,082 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Shanghai). Chengdu 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, Chengdu covered 866 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 218 km² of it. That is 36 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 5.5 times its size, and its people are 2.2 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 China
Its share of China
Of every 1,000 people in China in 2025, 4 lived in Chengdu, which is 6.1 million people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares stand for everyone in China, one square for every 1,000th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Chengdu's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 60 Abidjan Côte d’Ivoire6,621,711
- 61 Chaozhou6,407,770
- 62 Amman Jordan6,403,666
- 63 Baghdad Iraq6,390,735
- 64 Chengdu6,139,874
- 65 Nairobi Kenya6,134,334
- 66 Kozhikode India6,123,872
- 67 Shenyang5,702,638
- 68 Kabul Afghanistan5,635,737
In China, 2025
- 47 Tianjin7,285,342
- 51 Chongqing7,071,073
- 57 Nanjing6,800,676
- 61 Chaozhou6,407,770
- 64 Chengdu6,139,874
- 67 Shenyang5,702,638
- 77 Xi'an5,231,053
- 86 Zhengzhou4,878,035
- 87 Hefei4,867,000
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 Chengdu 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 Chengdu 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