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Kimberley, 
South Africa
271,078 people lived in Kimberley in 2025. It is the 2148th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 16th largest in South Africa.
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 Kimberley'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 Kimberley grew
Count 10 people in Kimberley in 1975 and the same count gives 33.4 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 401,676 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2020 and 2025.
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
Kimberley through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Kimberley in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
South Africa · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 95 cities in South Africa in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Johannesburg. The ringed dot in colour is Kimberley; 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, Kimberley covered 64 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 17 km² of it. That is 64 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 8 by 8 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 5 times its size, and its people are 3.3 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in South Africa
Its share of South Africa
Of every 1,000 people in South Africa in 2025, 4 lived in Kimberley, which is 271,078 people.
How to read this: shrink South Africa to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Kimberley; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 2139 Gunung Lingkas Indonesia271,868
- 2140 Zacatecas Mexico271,829
- 2141 Chengarchar Bangladesh271,704
- 2143 Thakurgaon Bangladesh271,454
- 2148 Kimberley271,078
- 2149 Jind India270,881
- 2150 Hassan India270,626
- 2151 Eket Nigeria270,603
- 2152 Nagano Japan270,476
In South Africa, 2025
- 1233 Polokwane451,786
- 1264 Chief Albert Luthuli Park441,204
- 1668 Edendale342,930
- 1986 Kanyamazane292,211
- 2148 Kimberley271,078
- 2249 Paarl259,665
- 2275 Vanderbijlpark257,093
- 2281 Centurion255,900
- 2445 Somerset West239,943
How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Kimberley 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 Kimberley 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