Topics
Lucknow, 
India
5,052,444 people lived in Lucknow in 2025. It is the 82nd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 13th largest in India.
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 Lucknow'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 Lucknow grew
For every 10 people in Lucknow in 1975, there were 34.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 5.7 million people in 2050. It passed five million people between 2020 and 2025.
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
Lucknow through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Lucknow in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
India · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 2,054 cities in India in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being New Delhi. The ringed dot in colour is Lucknow; 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, Lucknow covered 506 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 116 km² of it. That is 23 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 3.5 times its size, and its people are 3.4 times as many.
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 India
Its share of India
Of every 1,000 people in India in 2025, 3 lived in Lucknow, which is 5.1 million people.
How to read this: shrink India to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Lucknow; 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
- 78 Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo Sri Lanka5,223,838
- 79 Yaoundé Cameroon5,106,087
- 80 Kochi5,077,670
- 81 Hanoi Vietnam5,068,414
- 82 Lucknow5,052,444
- 83 Chattogram Bangladesh4,983,553
- 84 Singapore Singapore4,963,998
- 85 Kampala Uganda4,880,943
- 86 Zhengzhou China4,878,035
In India, 2025
- 53 Surat6,908,925
- 55 Pune6,817,951
- 66 Kozhikode6,123,872
- 80 Kochi5,077,670
- 82 Lucknow5,052,444
- 97 Kanpur4,329,973
- 110 Jaipur4,071,754
- 119 Varanasi3,858,863
- 136 Indore3,476,423
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 Lucknow 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 Lucknow 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