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Oyo, 
Nigeria
793,241 people lived in Oyo in 2025. It is the 668th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 24th largest in Nigeria.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Oyo grew
Count 10 people in Oyo in 1975 and the same count gives 75.6 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.2 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes a million people between 2035 and 2040.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: one column every five years, 1975 to 2050; its height is the number of people. Hatched columns are the UN's projection. The thin strip beneath says how sure the UN is of each figure: the stronger the colour, the surer. A blank means the place was not on the UN's list of cities that year.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Oyo through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Oyo in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Nigeria · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Nigeria and its 457 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Lagos). Oyo is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Oyo covered 122 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 31 km² of it. That is 39 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 5 times its size, and its people are 7.6 times as many.
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 Nigeria
Its share of Nigeria
Of every 1,000 people in Nigeria in 2025, 3 lived in Oyo, which is 793,241 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares stand for everyone in Nigeria, one square for every 1,000th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Oyo's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 664 Qinhuangdao China797,748
- 665 Arusha Tanzania795,744
- 666 Chelyabinsk Russia794,411
- 667 Jincheng China794,234
- 668 Oyo793,241
- 669 Irbid Jordan792,470
- 670 Dnipro Ukraine792,115
- 671 Fergana Uzbekistan791,877
- 672 Kota Kinabalu Malaysia789,885
In Nigeria, 2025
- 572 Sokoto903,238
- 622 Umuahia843,245
- 633 Nsukka830,196
- 659 Abeokuta801,826
- 668 Oyo793,241
- 705 Yola758,153
- 753 Zaria712,688
- 766 Akure700,747
- 807 Calabar673,427
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 Oyo 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 Oyo 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