Islāmābād, Pakistan

For every 10 people in Islāmābād in 1975, there were 60 in 2025.

On the UN's projection it will have 6.7 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes five million people between 2025 and 2030.

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.

How to read this: Pakistan and its 323 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Karachi). Islāmābād is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.

In 2025, Islāmābād covered 559 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 146 km² of it. That is 30 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 12.2 times its size, and its people are 6 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 in 2025, 2 lived in Islāmābād, which is 4.9 million people.

How to read this: 100 squares stand for everyone in Pakistan, one square for every 100th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Islāmābād's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.

In the world, 2025

1. 84 Singapore Singapore4,963,998
2. 85 Kampala Uganda4,880,943
3. 86 Zhengzhou China4,878,035
4. 87 Hefei China4,867,000
5. 88 Islāmābād4,860,084
6. 89 Kano Nigeria4,840,280
7. 90 Hong Kong Hong Kong4,749,543
8. 91 Saint Petersburg Russia4,736,499
9. 92 Santo Domingo Dominican Republic4,600,064

In Pakistan, 2025

1. 11 Karachi21,422,590
2. 17 Lahore15,156,430
3. 73 Faisalabad5,566,382
4. 88 Islāmābād4,860,084
5. 134 Peshawar3,554,423
6. 159 Gujranwala3,121,271
7. 165 Multan2,956,642
8. 174 Hyderabad2,863,633
9. 263 Sialkot1,907,978

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.

Pakistan · All the world's cities

The figures for Islāmābād 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 Islāmābād 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