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Cities · Equatorial Guinea · capital
Malabo, 
Equatorial Guinea
754,834 people lived in Malabo in 2025. It is the 710th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 2nd largest in Equatorial Guinea, where it is the capital.
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 Malabo grew
Where Malabo had 10 people in 1995, it had 108.1 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.3 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes a million people between 2035 and 2040. The UN first counts it as a city in 1995, when it passed 50,000 people.
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
Malabo through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Malabo in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Equatorial Guinea · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 2 cities in Equatorial Guinea in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Bata. The ringed dot in colour is Malabo; 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, Malabo covered 74 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 14 km² of it. That is 18 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 4 by 4 metres. Since 1995, its built-up land has grown to 5.9 times its size, and its people are 10.8 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 Equatorial Guinea
Its share of Equatorial Guinea
Of every 100 people in Equatorial Guinea in 2025, 39 lived in Malabo, which is 754,834 people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Equatorial Guinea; the coloured squares live in Malabo. 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
- 706 Taxila Pakistan757,451
- 707 Xinyu China756,365
- 708 Bonn Germany756,044
- 709 Rajshahi Bangladesh755,347
- 710 Malabo754,834
- 711 Xingtai China754,483
- 712 Kalaburagi India753,963
- 713 Puyang China753,625
- 714 Jiaxing China751,156
In Equatorial Guinea, 2025
- 604 Bata863,383
- 710 Malabo754,834
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 Malabo are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1995 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 Malabo 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