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Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo, 
Sri Lanka
5,223,838 people lived in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo in 2025. It is the 78th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Sri Lanka, where it is the capital.
Like every city on this site, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo is counted as a built-up area seen from above rather than as a city government's territory. Why that changes the number.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo grew
Where Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo had 10 people in 1975, it had 25.4 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 5.8 million people in 2050. It passed five million people between 2020 and 2025.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: each column is one of the UN's five-yearly estimates, 1975 through 2050, and taller means more people. Where a column is hatched the year has not happened yet. The strip under the columns is the UN's own confidence in each figure, palest where it is least sure; where it is blank the city was not on the list at all.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Sri Lanka · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 24 cities in Sri Lanka in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo; 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, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo covered 1,342 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 245 km² of it. That is 47 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 4.2 times its size, and its people are 2.5 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 Sri Lanka
Its share of Sri Lanka
Of every 100 people in Sri Lanka in 2025, 22 lived in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo, which is 5.2 million people.
How to read this: shrink Sri Lanka to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo; 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
- 74 Toronto Canada5,494,431
- 75 Mashhad Iran5,398,248
- 76 Dubai United Arab Emirates5,283,789
- 77 Xi'an China5,231,053
- 78 Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo5,223,838
- 79 Yaoundé Cameroon5,106,087
- 80 Kochi India5,077,670
- 81 Hanoi Vietnam5,068,414
- 82 Lucknow India5,052,444
In Sri Lanka, 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 Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo 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 Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo 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