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Ludhiana, 
India
2,245,106 people lived in Ludhiana in 2025. It is the 224th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 33rd largest in India.
Like every city on this site, Ludhiana 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 Ludhiana grew
Where Ludhiana had 10 people in 1975, it had 35.5 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
Ludhiana through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Ludhiana 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 Ludhiana; 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, Ludhiana covered 226 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 76 km² of it. That is 34 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.5 times its size, and its people are 3.5 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, 2 lived in Ludhiana, which is 2.2 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 Ludhiana; 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
- 220 Taichung Taiwan2,268,685
- 221 Denver United States2,265,994
- 222 Phnom Penh Cambodia2,261,055
- 223 Makassar Indonesia2,255,088
- 224 Ludhiana2,245,106
- 225 Philadelphia United States2,232,420
- 226 Fukuoka Japan2,225,078
- 227 Meerut2,209,886
- 228 Barranquilla Colombia2,208,021
In India, 2025
- 205 Ponnani2,409,567
- 206 Coimbatore2,382,988
- 210 Prayagraj2,347,869
- 219 Vadodara2,270,298
- 224 Ludhiana2,245,106
- 227 Meerut2,209,886
- 236 Madurai2,138,746
- 245 Dhanbad2,020,181
- 246 Mehsi2,018,610
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 Ludhiana 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 Ludhiana 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