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Peshawar, 
Pakistan
3,554,423 people lived in Peshawar in 2025. It is the 134th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 5th largest in Pakistan.
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 Peshawar grew
Where Peshawar had 10 people in 1975, it had 44.8 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 5.3 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes five million people between 2040 and 2045.
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
Peshawar through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Peshawar in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Pakistan · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 323 cities in Pakistan in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Karachi. The ringed dot in colour is Peshawar; 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, Peshawar covered 500 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 89 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 to 3.5 times its size, and its people are 4.5 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 Pakistan
Its share of Pakistan
Of every 100 people in Pakistan in 2025, 1 lived in Peshawar, which is 3.6 million people.
How to read this: shrink Pakistan to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Peshawar; 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
- 130 Kasaï-Oriental Democratic Republic of the Congo3,605,738
- 131 Karaj Iran3,598,661
- 132 Berlin Germany3,560,908
- 133 Savar Bangladesh3,557,381
- 134 Peshawar3,554,423
- 135 Lusaka Zambia3,510,723
- 136 Indore India3,476,423
- 137 Jinan China3,472,980
- 138 Changsha China3,457,508
In Pakistan, 2025
- 11 Karachi21,422,590
- 17 Lahore15,156,430
- 73 Faisalabad5,566,382
- 88 Islāmābād4,860,084
- 134 Peshawar3,554,423
- 159 Gujranwala3,121,271
- 165 Multan2,956,642
- 174 Hyderabad2,863,633
- 263 Sialkot1,907,978
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 Peshawar 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 Peshawar 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