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Kampala, 
Uganda
4,880,943 people lived in Kampala in 2025. It is the 85th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Uganda, where it is the capital.
Like every city on this site, Kampala 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 Kampala grew
Count 10 people in Kampala in 1975 and the same count gives 80.8 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 7.9 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: 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
Kampala through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Kampala in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Uganda · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 27 cities in Uganda in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is Kampala; 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, Kampala covered 816 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 183 km² of it. That is 37 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 times its size, and its people are 8.1 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 Uganda
Its share of Uganda
Of every 100 people in Uganda in 2025, 9 lived in Kampala, which is 4.9 million people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Uganda; the coloured squares live in Kampala. 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
- 81 Hanoi Vietnam5,068,414
- 82 Lucknow India5,052,444
- 83 Chattogram Bangladesh4,983,553
- 84 Singapore Singapore4,963,998
- 85 Kampala4,880,943
- 86 Zhengzhou China4,878,035
- 87 Hefei China4,867,000
- 88 Islāmābād Pakistan4,860,084
- 89 Kano Nigeria4,840,280
In Uganda, 2025
- 85 Kampala4,880,943
- 1495 Mbale City380,565
- 1657 Bukalasi345,288
- 2227 Jinja261,604
- 2536 Mbarara231,926
- 2599 Arua226,390
- 3035 Gulu197,090
- 3796 Masaka159,564
- 4221 Buligenyi144,692
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 Kampala 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 Kampala 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