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Mbarara, 
Uganda
231,926 people lived in Mbarara in 2025. It is the 2536th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 5th largest in Uganda.
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 Mbarara grew
Where Mbarara had 10 people in 1995, it had 35.9 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 370,881 people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes 250,000 people between 2025 and 2030. 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
Mbarara through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Mbarara in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Uganda · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 27 cities in Uganda in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Kampala. The ringed dot in colour is Mbarara; 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, Mbarara covered 47 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 8.6 km² of it. That is 37 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1995, its built-up land has grown to 2.2 times its size, and its people are 3.6 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 Uganda
Its share of Uganda
Of every 1,000 people in Uganda in 2025, 5 lived in Mbarara, which is 231,926 people.
How to read this: shrink Uganda to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Mbarara; 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
- 2527 Nakhon Pathom Thailand232,416
- 2528 Bosaso Somalia232,410
- 2529 Biliri Nigeria232,398
- 2531 Oke Iho Nigeria232,348
- 2536 Mbarara231,926
- 2543 Man Côte d’Ivoire230,997
- 2544 Hasilpur Pakistan230,987
- 2548 Cockrell Hill United States230,727
- 2554 Luputa Democratic Republic of the Congo230,128
In Uganda, 2025
- 85 Kampala4,880,943
- 1495 Mbale City380,565
- 1657 Bukalasi345,288
- 2227 Jinja261,604
- 2536 Mbarara231,926
- 2599 Arua226,390
- 3035 Gulu197,090
- 3796 Masaka159,564
- 4221 Buligenyi144,692
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 Mbarara 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 Mbarara 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