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Rourkela, 
India
776,631 people lived in Rourkela in 2025. It is the 683rd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 106th largest in India.
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 Rourkela'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 Rourkela grew
Where Rourkela had 10 people in 1975, it had 30.7 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 958,550 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
Rourkela through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Rourkela in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
India · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: India and its 2,054 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is New Delhi). Rourkela 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, Rourkela covered 96 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 20 km² of it. That is 26 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 3.1 times its size, and its people are 3.1 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in India
Its share of India
Of every 1,000 people in India in 2025, 1 lived in Rourkela, which is 776,631 people.
How to read this: shrink India to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Rourkela; 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
- 679 Zhenjiang China781,639
- 680 Jalgaon781,486
- 681 Muscat Oman780,545
- 682 Pingdingshan China779,154
- 683 Rourkela776,631
- 684 Bahawalpur Pakistan776,611
- 685 Kharagpur776,133
- 686 Yueyang China775,434
- 687 Changshu China774,010
In India, 2025
- 656 Udaipur807,617
- 660 Belagavi800,130
- 661 Bilaspur799,772
- 680 Jalgaon781,486
- 683 Rourkela776,631
- 685 Kharagpur776,133
- 689 Amravati771,610
- 692 Cape Town770,260
- 693 Nanded770,215
How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Rourkela 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 Rourkela 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