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Mihtarlam, 
Afghanistan
162,346 people lived in Mihtarlam in 2025. It is the 3726th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 19th largest in Afghanistan.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and Mihtarlam's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Mihtarlam grew
Count 10 people in Mihtarlam in 2005 and the same count gives 23.1 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 400,692 people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes 250,000 people between 2030 and 2035. The UN first counts it as a city in 2005, 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
Mihtarlam through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Mihtarlam in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Afghanistan · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 85 cities in Afghanistan in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Kabul. The ringed dot in colour is Mihtarlam; 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, Mihtarlam covered 25 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 3.4 km² of it. That is 21 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 2010, its built-up land has grown to 2.6 times its size, and its people have grown by 74%.
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 Afghanistan
Its share of Afghanistan
Of every 1,000 people in Afghanistan in 2025, 4 lived in Mihtarlam, which is 162,346 people.
How to read this: shrink Afghanistan to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Mihtarlam; 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
- 3696 Cazombo Angola163,870
- 3712 Delduar Bangladesh163,064
- 3713 Kawm Ombo Egypt162,984
- 3721 Samarbagh Pakistan162,603
- 3726 Mihtarlam162,346
- 3740 Fenchuganj Bangladesh161,718
- 3741 N'dalatando Angola161,700
- 3768 Kahama Tanzania160,713
- 3796 Masaka Uganda159,564
In Afghanistan, 2025
- 2915 Firozkoh204,753
- 3080 Fayzabad195,148
- 3153 Toraghundi190,543
- 3417 Guzarah176,657
- 3726 Mihtarlam162,346
- 5229 Lal117,617
- 5258 Golbahar116,780
- 5488 Qeysar112,398
- 5649 Baghlan109,385
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 Mihtarlam are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 2005 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 Mihtarlam 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