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Jeddah, 
Saudi Arabia
4,284,080 people lived in Jeddah in 2025. It is the 100th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 2nd largest in Saudi Arabia.
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 Jeddah'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 Jeddah grew
Count 10 people in Jeddah in 1975 and the same count gives 226.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 5.8 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes five million people between 2035 and 2040.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: one column every five years, 1975 to 2050; its height is the number of people. Hatched columns are the UN's projection. The thin strip beneath says how sure the UN is of each figure: the stronger the colour, the surer. A blank means the place was not on the UN's list of cities that year.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Jeddah through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Jeddah in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Saudi Arabia · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 44 cities in Saudi Arabia in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Riyadh. The ringed dot in colour is Jeddah; 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, Jeddah covered 699 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 172 km² of it. That is 40 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 5.2 times its size, and its people are 22.6 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 Saudi Arabia
Its share of Saudi Arabia
Of every 100 people in Saudi Arabia in 2025, 12 lived in Jeddah, which is 4.3 million people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Saudi Arabia; the coloured squares live in Jeddah. 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
- 96 Harbin China4,376,259
- 97 Kanpur India4,329,973
- 98 Kumasi Ghana4,297,984
- 99 Damascus Syria4,287,746
- 100 Jeddah4,284,080
- 101 Kuwait City Kuwait4,265,132
- 102 Medan Indonesia4,245,895
- 103 Bamako Mali4,244,881
- 104 Luxor Egypt4,188,023
In Saudi Arabia, 2025
- 52 Riyadh6,916,417
- 100 Jeddah4,284,080
- 212 Dammam2,335,647
- 289 Mecca1,692,152
- 354 Medina1,432,287
- 738 Al Ahsa725,760
- 990 Tabuk553,389
- 1113 Khamis Mushayt497,246
- 1151 At Ta'if481,818
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 Jeddah 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 Jeddah 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