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Kannur, 
India
662,128 people lived in Kannur in 2025. It is the 821st largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 128th largest in India.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Kannur grew
For every 10 people in Kannur in 1975, there were 57 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 742,413 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1975 and 1980.
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
Kannur through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Kannur in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
India · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 2,054 cities in India in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being New Delhi. The ringed dot in colour is Kannur; 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, Kannur covered 127 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 18 km² of it. That is 27 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 15.1 times its size, and its people are 5.7 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 India
Its share of India
Fewer than 1 in every 1,000 people in India lived in Kannur in 2025 — about 1 in 2,222.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 817 St. Louis United States663,392
- 818 Blida Algeria663,070
- 819 Leiyang China662,696
- 820 Wuppertal Germany662,663
- 821 Kannur662,128
- 822 Jhansi662,059
- 823 Bogura Bangladesh661,378
- 824 Gqeberha South Africa661,220
- 825 Diyarbakir Türkiye660,826
In India, 2025
- 789 Vapi682,459
- 795 Jamnagar680,589
- 801 Yamunanagar677,536
- 816 Anand664,789
- 821 Kannur662,128
- 822 Jhansi662,059
- 827 Siliguri658,183
- 838 Dhule643,777
- 840 Jalpaiguri642,158
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 Kannur 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 Kannur 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