Topics
Natal, 
Brazil
1,089,473 people lived in Natal in 2025. It is the 471st largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 17th largest in Brazil.
Like every city on this site, Natal 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 Natal grew
Where Natal had 10 people in 1975, it had 30.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.1 million people in 2050. It passed a million people between 2015 and 2020.
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
Natal through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Natal in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Brazil · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Natal is the dot in colour with a ring around it. The grey dots are the other cities of Brazil in 2025, 356 in all, led by São Paulo, each drawn with an area that matches its people. Countries next door are outlines only.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Natal covered 203 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 43 km² of it. That is 40 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.5 times its size, and its people are 3 times as many.
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 Brazil
Its share of Brazil
Of every 1,000 people in Brazil in 2025, 5 lived in Natal, which is 1.1 million people.
How to read this: shrink Brazil to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Natal; 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
- 467 East Jerusalem Palestine1,105,567
- 468 Solapur India1,102,702
- 469 Tianjia‘an China1,100,258
- 470 Yancheng China1,093,432
- 471 Natal1,089,473
- 472 Yerevan Armenia1,089,209
- 473 Kaifeng China1,087,088
- 474 Perth Australia1,079,374
- 475 Khulna Bangladesh1,074,134
In Brazil, 2025
- 299 Campinas1,631,432
- 328 Brasília1,521,148
- 404 São Luís1,264,379
- 419 Vitória1,226,500
- 471 Natal1,089,473
- 482 João Pessoa1,064,481
- 496 Santos1,027,752
- 499 Maceió1,023,645
- 559 Teresina929,795
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 Natal 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 Natal 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