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Denver, 
United States
2,265,994 people lived in Denver in 2025. It is the 221st largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 8th largest in the United States.
Like every city on this site, Denver 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 Denver grew
Count 10 people in Denver in 1975 and the same count gives 125.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 2.7 million people in 2050. It passed a 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
Denver through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Denver in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
United States · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: the United States and its 348 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is New York City). Denver 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, Denver covered 969 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 248 km² of it. That is 110 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 10 by 10 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 10.3 times its size, and its people are 12.5 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 the United States
Its share of the United States
Of every 1,000 people in the United States in 2025, 7 lived in Denver, which is 2.3 million people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in the United States; the coloured squares live in Denver. 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
- 217 Manaus Brazil2,277,352
- 218 Lanzhou China2,272,104
- 219 Vadodara India2,270,298
- 220 Taichung Taiwan2,268,685
- 221 Denver2,265,994
- 222 Phnom Penh Cambodia2,261,055
- 223 Makassar Indonesia2,255,088
- 224 Ludhiana India2,245,106
- 225 Philadelphia2,232,420
In the United States, 2025
- 125 Chicago3,683,385
- 145 Washington, D.C.3,270,018
- 155 San Francisco3,163,486
- 170 Miami2,912,486
- 221 Denver2,265,994
- 225 Philadelphia2,232,420
- 232 Las Vegas2,183,655
- 251 Phoenix1,972,021
- 260 San Diego1,915,114
How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Denver 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 Denver 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