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Taloqan, 
Afghanistan
290,028 people lived in Taloqan in 2025. It is the 2003rd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 6th largest in Afghanistan.
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 Taloqan'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 Taloqan grew
Where Taloqan had 10 people in 1995, it had 32.4 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 478,276 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2015 and 2020. The UN first counts it as a city in 1995, when it passed 50,000 people.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: one column every five years, 1975 to 2050; its height is the number of people. Hatched columns are the UN's projection. The thin strip beneath says how sure the UN is of each figure: the stronger the colour, the surer. A blank means the place was not on the UN's list of cities that year.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Taloqan through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Taloqan in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Afghanistan · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 85 cities in Afghanistan in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Kabul. The ringed dot in colour is Taloqan; 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, Taloqan covered 39 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 6.7 km² of it. That is 23 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1995, its built-up land has grown to 3.2 times its size, and its people are 3.2 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 Afghanistan
Its share of Afghanistan
Of every 1,000 people in Afghanistan in 2025, 7 lived in Taloqan, which is 290,028 people.
How to read this: shrink Afghanistan to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Taloqan; 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
- 1998 Euclid United States290,669
- 1999 Nawada India290,657
- 2001 Baicheng China290,420
- 2002 Habra India290,311
- 2003 Taloqan290,028
- 2007 Okrika Nigeria289,429
- 2008 Maheshkhunt India289,419
- 2009 Banda India289,334
- 2010 Qamishli Syria289,200
In Afghanistan, 2025
- 405 Herat1,259,425
- 662 Kandahar799,015
- 834 Mazar i sharif651,287
- 927 Jalalabad587,508
- 2003 Taloqan290,028
- 2028 Kunduz287,295
- 2560 Maymana229,355
- 2574 Puli Khumri228,271
- 2592 Charikar227,054
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 Taloqan are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1995 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 Taloqan 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