Topics
Kumamoto, 
Japan
641,185 people lived in Kumamoto in 2025. It is the 843rd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 12th largest in Japan.
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 Kumamoto grew
Where Kumamoto had 10 people in 1975, it had 14.7 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 550,391 people in 2050.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: one column every five years, 1975 to 2050; its height is the number of people. Hatched columns are the UN's projection. The thin strip beneath says how sure the UN is of each figure: the stronger the colour, the surer. A blank means the place was not on the UN's list of cities that year.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Kumamoto through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Kumamoto in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Japan · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 137 cities in Japan in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Tokyo. The ringed dot in colour is Kumamoto; 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, Kumamoto covered 166 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 49 km² of it. That is 76 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 9 by 9 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 70%, and its people have grown by 47%.
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 Japan
Its share of Japan
Of every 1,000 people in Japan in 2025, 5 lived in Kumamoto, which is 641,185 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in Japan; the coloured squares live in Kumamoto. 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
- 839 Toulouse France642,224
- 840 Jalpaiguri India642,158
- 841 Bauchi Nigeria642,082
- 842 Rangpur Bangladesh641,327
- 843 Kumamoto641,185
- 844 Magelang Indonesia640,707
- 845 Cancún Mexico637,532
- 846 Jiangyin China637,502
- 847 Morelia Mexico637,430
In Japan, 2025
- 435 Hiroshima1,185,788
- 484 Naha1,060,017
- 515 Nara993,952
- 643 Okayama817,266
- 843 Kumamoto641,185
- 978 Otsu559,798
- 1041 Kanazawa533,682
- 1124 Himeji494,064
- 1145 Kagoshima484,164
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 Kumamoto 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 Kumamoto 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