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Faisalabad, 
Pakistan
5,566,382 people lived in Faisalabad in 2025. It is the 73rd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 3rd largest in Pakistan.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and Faisalabad's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Faisalabad grew
Count 10 people in Faisalabad in 1975 and the same count gives 50.7 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 7.3 million people in 2050. It passed five million people between 2015 and 2020.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: each column is one of the UN's five-yearly estimates, 1975 through 2050, and taller means more people. Where a column is hatched the year has not happened yet. The strip under the columns is the UN's own confidence in each figure, palest where it is least sure; where it is blank the city was not on the list at all.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Faisalabad through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Faisalabad in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Pakistan · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 323 cities in Pakistan in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Karachi. The ringed dot in colour is Faisalabad; 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, Faisalabad covered 341 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 88 km² of it. That is 16 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 4 by 4 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.6 times its size, and its people are 5.1 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 Pakistan
Its share of Pakistan
Of every 100 people in Pakistan in 2025, 2 lived in Faisalabad, which is 5.6 million people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Pakistan; the coloured squares live in Faisalabad. 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
- 69 Onitsha Nigeria5,627,706
- 70 Yangon Myanmar5,618,303
- 71 Accra Ghana5,592,780
- 72 Madrid Spain5,583,601
- 73 Faisalabad5,566,382
- 74 Toronto Canada5,494,431
- 75 Mashhad Iran5,398,248
- 76 Dubai United Arab Emirates5,283,789
- 77 Xi'an China5,231,053
In Pakistan, 2025
- 11 Karachi21,422,590
- 17 Lahore15,156,430
- 73 Faisalabad5,566,382
- 88 Islāmābād4,860,084
- 134 Peshawar3,554,423
- 159 Gujranwala3,121,271
- 165 Multan2,956,642
- 174 Hyderabad2,863,633
- 263 Sialkot1,907,978
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 Faisalabad 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 Faisalabad 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