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Cities · Papua New Guinea · capital
Port Moresby, 
Papua New Guinea
413,223 people lived in Port Moresby in 2025. It is the 1361st largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Papua New Guinea, 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 Port Moresby'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 Port Moresby grew
Count 10 people in Port Moresby in 1975 and the same count gives 63.4 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 576,904 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2005 and 2010.
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
Port Moresby through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Port Moresby in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Papua New Guinea · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Papua New Guinea and its 11 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people. Port Moresby 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, Port Moresby covered 72 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 9.3 km² of it. That is 23 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.4 times its size, and its people are 6.3 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 Papua New Guinea
Its share of Papua New Guinea
Of every 100 people in Papua New Guinea in 2025, 4 lived in Port Moresby, which is 413,223 people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Papua New Guinea; the coloured squares live in Port Moresby. The grey rest live in other cities, in towns or in the countryside.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 1357 Batangas City Philippines415,103
- 1358 São José do Rio Preto Brazil414,406
- 1359 Sareyn Iran413,772
- 1360 Charsadda Pakistan413,686
- 1361 Port Moresby413,223
- 1362 Hathras India413,122
- 1363 Ciudad del Este Paraguay412,725
- 1364 Sanhur Egypt412,618
- 1365 Kaolack Senegal412,347
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 Port Moresby 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 Port Moresby 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