Tal Afar, Iraq

Count 10 people in Tal Afar in 1980 and the same count gives 40.9 in 2025.

On the UN's projection it will have 416,460 people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes 250,000 people between 2025 and 2030. The UN first counts it as a city in 1980, when it passed 50,000 people.

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.

How to read this: every dot is one of the 88 cities in Iraq in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Baghdad. The ringed dot in colour is Tal Afar; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.

In 2025, Tal Afar covered 26 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 5.7 km² of it. That is 24 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1980, its built-up land has grown to 2.3 times its size, and its people are 4.1 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 1,000 people in Iraq in 2025, 5 lived in Tal Afar, which is 237,454 people.

How to read this: 1,000 squares stand for everyone in Iraq, one square for every 1,000th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Tal Afar's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.

In the world, 2025

1. 2459 Derudeib Sudan238,164
2. 2460 Ota Japan237,865
3. 2461 Diourbel Senegal237,795
4. 2463 Jinju-si South Korea237,707
5. 2464 Tal Afar237,454
6. 2465 Dhaka India237,385
7. 2469 Manikganj Bangladesh237,163
8. 2470 Lakhnaur India237,133
9. 2471 Raqqa Syria237,106

In Iraq, 2025

1. 1586 Fallujah359,695
2. 1870 Al-Shatrah307,652
3. 2376 Shorsh245,565
4. 2413 Gayara242,690
5. 2464 Tal Afar237,454
6. 2674 Az Zubayr220,737
7. 2894 Suq al Shyukh206,015
8. 3169 Abu Gharaq189,692
9. 3194 Al Qurna188,604

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.

Iraq · All the world's cities

The figures for Tal Afar are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1980 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 Tal Afar 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