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Mbeya, 
Tanzania
539,248 people lived in Mbeya in 2025. It is the 1025th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 5th largest in Tanzania.
Like every city on this site, Mbeya 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 Mbeya grew
Where Mbeya had 10 people in 1980, it had 73.6 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 801,207 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2000 and 2005. The UN first counts it as a city in 1980, 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
Mbeya through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Mbeya in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Tanzania · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 45 cities in Tanzania in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Dar es Salaam. The ringed dot in colour is Mbeya; 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, Mbeya covered 107 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 25 km² of it. That is 46 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1980, its built-up land has grown to 3.3 times its size, and its people are 7.4 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in Tanzania
Its share of Tanzania
Of every 1,000 people in Tanzania in 2025, 8 lived in Mbeya, which is 539,248 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in Tanzania; the coloured squares live in Mbeya. 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
- 1021 Kendal Indonesia541,030
- 1022 Honolulu United States540,683
- 1023 Matamoros Mexico540,236
- 1024 Tirupati India539,275
- 1025 Mbeya539,248
- 1026 Kupang Indonesia538,998
- 1027 Shaoyang China538,432
- 1028 Fengrun China538,206
- 1029 Xianyang China537,601
In Tanzania, 2025
- 42 Dar es Salaam7,795,114
- 538 Zanzibar City966,642
- 544 Mwanza954,104
- 665 Arusha795,744
- 1025 Mbeya539,248
- 1205 Morogoro461,634
- 1677 Kigoma340,483
- 1861 Moshi309,202
- 1956 Tanga296,202
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 Mbeya are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1980 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 Mbeya 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