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Montevideo, 
Uruguay
1,240,244 people lived in Montevideo in 2025. It is the 410th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Uruguay, 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 Montevideo'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 Montevideo grew
For every 10 people in Montevideo in 1975, there were 9.2 in 2025: it shrank.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.2 million 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
Montevideo through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Montevideo in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Uruguay · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 7 cities in Uruguay in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is Montevideo; 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, Montevideo covered 231 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 76 km² of it. That is 61 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 8 by 8 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown by 46%, and its people have fallen by 8%.
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 Uruguay
Its share of Uruguay
Of every 100 people in Uruguay in 2025, 37 lived in Montevideo, which is 1.2 million people.
How to read this: 100 squares stand for everyone in Uruguay, one square for every 100th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Montevideo's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 406 Sendai Japan1,256,440
- 407 Bujumbura Burundi1,246,960
- 408 Tiruppur India1,242,837
- 409 Sylhet Bangladesh1,242,548
- 410 Montevideo1,240,244
- 411 Tripoli Libya1,239,823
- 412 Gyanpur India1,237,249
- 413 Amsterdam Netherlands1,235,985
- 414 Zhangzhou China1,232,911
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 Montevideo 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 Montevideo 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