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Kharkiv, 
Ukraine
1,308,892 people lived in Kharkiv in 2025. It is the 394th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 2nd largest in Ukraine.
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 Kharkiv'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 Kharkiv grew
Count 10 people in Kharkiv in 1975 and the same count gives 9.3 in 2025 — the city lost people.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.2 million people in 2050.
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
Kharkiv through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Kharkiv in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Ukraine · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Ukraine and its 79 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Kiev). Kharkiv is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Kharkiv covered 230 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 52 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 by 43%, and its people have fallen by 7%.
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 Ukraine
Its share of Ukraine
Of every 100 people in Ukraine in 2025, 3 lived in Kharkiv, which is 1.3 million people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Ukraine; the coloured squares live in Kharkiv. 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
- 390 Yichang China1,314,779
- 391 Asunción Paraguay1,314,663
- 392 Guwahati India1,314,019
- 393 Tabriz Iran1,309,004
- 394 Kharkiv1,308,892
- 395 Amritsar India1,303,330
- 396 Klipgat South Africa1,300,816
- 397 San Pedro Sula Honduras1,299,457
- 398 Tembisa South Africa1,298,512
In Ukraine, 2025
- 192 Kiev2,614,581
- 394 Kharkiv1,308,892
- 575 Odesa899,157
- 670 Dnipro792,115
- 758 Donetsk705,832
- 863 Lviv627,280
- 966 Zaporizhzhia566,844
- 1161 Kryvyi Rih477,940
- 1342 Mykolaiv419,484
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 Kharkiv 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 Kharkiv 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