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Colachel, 
India
837,735 people lived in Colachel in 2025. It is the 627th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 96th largest in India.
That figure counts the whole built-up area, not the area Colachel governs, so it may be far from the number the city publishes about itself. How the UN measures a city.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Colachel grew
Where Colachel had 10 people in 1975, it had 31.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.0 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes a million people between 2045 and 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
Colachel through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Colachel in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
India · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: India and its 2,054 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is New Delhi). Colachel 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, Colachel covered 270 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 18 km² of it. That is 21 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 6.9 times its size, and its people are 3.1 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 India
Its share of India
Of every 1,000 people in India in 2025, 1 lived in Colachel, which is 837,735 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in India; the coloured squares live in Colachel. 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
- 623 Bakhtiyarpur843,195
- 624 Kotwali839,900
- 625 Cuernavaca Mexico839,485
- 626 Fuyang China839,236
- 627 Colachel837,735
- 628 Warangal837,561
- 629 Kermanshah Iran837,230
- 630 Tengzhou China834,697
- 631 Campo Grande Brazil833,403
In India, 2025
- 606 Guntur862,068
- 616 Muzaffarnagar849,004
- 623 Bakhtiyarpur843,195
- 624 Kotwali839,900
- 627 Colachel837,735
- 628 Warangal837,561
- 636 Imphal824,757
- 640 Vellore820,103
- 641 Kolhapur819,671
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 Colachel 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 Colachel 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