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Kitakyushu, 
Japan
1,206,731 people lived in Kitakyushu in 2025. It is the 428th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 7th largest in Japan.
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 Kitakyushu'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 Kitakyushu grew
Count 10 people in Kitakyushu in 1975 and the same count gives 11.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.0 million people in 2050.
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
Kitakyushu through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Kitakyushu in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Japan · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Japan and its 137 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Tokyo). Kitakyushu 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, Kitakyushu covered 375 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 95 km² of it. That is 79 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 9 by 9 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 55%, and its people have grown by 13%.
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 Japan
Its share of Japan
Of every 1,000 people in Japan in 2025, 10 lived in Kitakyushu, which is 1.2 million people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares stand for everyone in Japan, one square for every 1,000th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Kitakyushu's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 424 Ganzhou China1,216,248
- 425 Ciudad Juárez Mexico1,212,370
- 426 Begusarai India1,210,200
- 427 Pekanbaru Indonesia1,208,872
- 428 Kitakyushu1,206,731
- 429 Lyon France1,202,985
- 430 Prague Czechia1,197,765
- 431 Calgary Canada1,197,110
- 432 Nizhny Novgorod Russia1,196,944
In Japan, 2025
- 49 Nagoya7,146,160
- 226 Fukuoka2,225,078
- 252 Sapporo1,964,519
- 406 Sendai1,256,440
- 428 Kitakyushu1,206,731
- 435 Hiroshima1,185,788
- 484 Naha1,060,017
- 515 Nara993,952
- 643 Okayama817,266
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 Kitakyushu 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 Kitakyushu 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