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La Paz, 
Bolivia
2,024,413 people lived in La Paz in 2025. It is the 244th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Bolivia, where it is the capital.
Like every city on this site, La Paz is counted as a built-up area seen from above rather than as a city government's territory. Why that changes the number.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How La Paz grew
Count 10 people in La Paz in 1975 and the same count gives 26.9 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 2.3 million people in 2050. It passed a million people between 1985 and 1990.
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
La Paz through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in La Paz in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Bolivia · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 12 cities in Bolivia in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is La Paz; 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, La Paz covered 294 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 86 km² of it. That is 43 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.8 times its size, and its people are 2.7 times as many.
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 Bolivia
Its share of Bolivia
Of every 100 people in Bolivia in 2025, 16 lived in La Paz, which is 2.0 million people.
How to read this: shrink Bolivia to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in La Paz; 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
- 240 Rabat Morocco2,069,287
- 241 Basra Iraq2,033,553
- 242 Vienna Austria2,031,326
- 243 Maracaibo Venezuela2,030,633
- 244 La Paz2,024,413
- 245 Dhanbad India2,020,181
- 246 Mehsi India2,018,610
- 247 Nashik India1,996,763
- 248 Hohhot China1,993,292
In Bolivia, 2025
- 244 La Paz2,024,413
- 249 Santa Cruz de la Sierra1,980,432
- 377 Cochabamba1,346,672
- 1643 Oruro347,830
- 2030 Sucre286,383
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 La Paz 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 La Paz 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