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Sulaymaniyah, 
Iraq
907,815 people lived in Sulaymaniyah in 2025. It is the 569th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 10th largest in Iraq.
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 Sulaymaniyah'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 Sulaymaniyah grew
Count 10 people in Sulaymaniyah in 1975 and the same count gives 36.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.4 million people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes a million people between 2030 and 2035.
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
Sulaymaniyah through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Sulaymaniyah in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Iraq · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Iraq and its 88 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Baghdad). Sulaymaniyah 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, Sulaymaniyah covered 116 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 29 km² of it. That is 32 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 4.4 times its size, and its people are 3.6 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 Iraq
Its share of Iraq
Of every 100 people in Iraq in 2025, 2 lived in Sulaymaniyah, which is 907,815 people.
How to read this: 100 squares, one for every 100th person in Iraq; the coloured squares live in Sulaymaniyah. 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
- 565 Ikorodu Nigeria916,166
- 566 Shiraz Iran914,496
- 567 Blantyre Malawi909,289
- 568 Weifang China908,584
- 569 Sulaymaniyah907,815
- 570 Dusseldorf Germany907,386
- 571 Tbilisi Georgia906,746
- 572 Sokoto Nigeria903,238
- 573 Frankfurt Germany900,483
In Iraq, 2025
- 444 Kirkuk1,153,160
- 486 Al Hillah1,055,267
- 501 Karbala1,022,893
- 535 Duhok969,701
- 569 Sulaymaniyah907,815
- 577 Ad Diwaniyah894,478
- 645 Zakho814,526
- 647 Nasiriyah813,799
- 648 Al Mushahidah813,506
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 Sulaymaniyah 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 Sulaymaniyah 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