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Matamoros, 
Mexico
540,236 people lived in Matamoros in 2025. It is the 1023rd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 29th largest in Mexico.
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 Matamoros grew
Where Matamoros had 10 people in 1975, it had 17.4 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 599,329 people in 2050.
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
Matamoros through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Matamoros in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Mexico · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 186 cities in Mexico in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Mexico City. The ringed dot in colour is Matamoros; 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, Matamoros covered 110 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 29 km² of it. That is 53 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.3 times its size, and its people have grown by 74%.
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 Mexico
Its share of Mexico
Of every 1,000 people in Mexico in 2025, 4 lived in Matamoros, which is 540,236 people.
How to read this: shrink Mexico to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Matamoros; 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
- 1019 Durango541,787
- 1020 Chengtougu China541,451
- 1021 Kendal Indonesia541,030
- 1022 Honolulu United States540,683
- 1023 Matamoros540,236
- 1024 Tirupati India539,275
- 1025 Mbeya Tanzania539,248
- 1026 Kupang Indonesia538,998
- 1027 Shaoyang China538,432
In Mexico, 2025
- 901 Tampico603,035
- 947 Tuxtla Gutiérrez580,878
- 1018 Xalapa542,213
- 1019 Durango541,787
- 1023 Matamoros540,236
- 1101 Oaxaca de Juárez502,534
- 1152 Villahermosa481,525
- 1219 Irapuato456,628
- 1379 Mazatlán409,143
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 Matamoros 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 Matamoros 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