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Sfax, 
Tunisia
608,293 people lived in Sfax in 2025. It is the 891st largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 2nd largest in Tunisia.
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 Sfax'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 Sfax grew
For every 10 people in Sfax in 1975, there were 29.9 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 624,735 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1980 and 1985.
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
Sfax through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Sfax in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Tunisia · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 24 cities in Tunisia in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Tunis. The ringed dot in colour is Sfax; 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, Sfax covered 178 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 56 km² of it. That is 91 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 10 by 10 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2 times its size, and its people are 3 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 Tunisia
Its share of Tunisia
Of every 100 people in Tunisia in 2025, 5 lived in Sfax, which is 608,293 people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Tunisia; the coloured squares live in Sfax. 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
- 887 Hanover Germany611,288
- 888 Cipanas Indonesia610,177
- 889 Xingning China609,923
- 890 Kasur Pakistan609,468
- 891 Sfax608,293
- 892 Beira Mozambique608,097
- 893 Chapainawabganj Bangladesh607,924
- 894 Zhaoqing China607,624
- 895 Bihar Sharif India607,401
In Tunisia, 2025
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 Sfax 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 Sfax 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