Topics
Minsk, 
Belarus
1,950,680 people lived in Minsk in 2025. It is the 254th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Belarus, where it is the capital.
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 Minsk'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 Minsk grew
Count 10 people in Minsk in 1975 and the same count gives 18.5 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.8 million people in 2050.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: each column is one of the UN's five-yearly estimates, 1975 through 2050, and taller means more people. Where a column is hatched the year has not happened yet. The strip under the columns is the UN's own confidence in each figure, palest where it is least sure; where it is blank the city was not on the list at all.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Minsk through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Minsk in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Belarus · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 15 cities in Belarus in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is Minsk; 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, Minsk covered 217 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 50 km² of it. That is 25 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 67%, and its people have grown by 85%.
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 Belarus
Its share of Belarus
Of every 100 people in Belarus in 2025, 22 lived in Minsk, which is 2.0 million people.
How to read this: shrink Belarus to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Minsk; 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
- 250 Baku Azerbaijan1,977,897
- 251 Phoenix United States1,972,021
- 252 Sapporo Japan1,964,519
- 253 Jamshedpur India1,956,840
- 254 Minsk1,950,680
- 255 Puebla Mexico1,947,971
- 256 Freetown Sierra Leone1,935,761
- 257 N'Djaména Chad1,934,909
- 258 Beni Democratic Republic of the Congo1,923,700
In Belarus, 2025
- 254 Minsk1,950,680
- 1048 Homel529,882
- 1493 Mahilioŭ380,951
- 1522 Hrodna374,464
- 1546 Brest369,414
- 1582 Vitsebsk361,484
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 Minsk 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 Minsk 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