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Varanasi, 
India
3,858,863 people lived in Varanasi in 2025. It is the 119th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 16th largest in India.
Like every city on this site, Varanasi 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 Varanasi grew
Count 10 people in Varanasi in 1975 and the same count gives 22.5 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 4.8 million people in 2050.
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
Varanasi through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Varanasi in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
India · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Varanasi is the dot in colour with a ring around it. The grey dots are the other cities of India in 2025, 2,054 in all, led by New Delhi, each drawn with an area that matches its people. Countries next door are outlines only.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Varanasi covered 356 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 65 km² of it. That is 17 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 4 by 4 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 4 times its size, and its people are 2.2 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 100 people in India
Its share of India
Of every 1,000 people in India in 2025, 3 lived in Varanasi, which is 3.9 million people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in India; the coloured squares live in Varanasi. 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
- 115 Houston United States3,955,046
- 116 Monterrey Mexico3,938,015
- 117 Tashkent Uzbekistan3,935,793
- 118 Antananarivo Madagascar3,916,219
- 119 Varanasi3,858,863
- 120 Dakar Senegal3,852,475
- 121 Owerri Nigeria3,833,343
- 122 Ürümqi China3,755,144
- 123 Ibadan Nigeria3,720,721
In India, 2025
- 80 Kochi5,077,670
- 82 Lucknow5,052,444
- 97 Kanpur4,329,973
- 110 Jaipur4,071,754
- 119 Varanasi3,858,863
- 136 Indore3,476,423
- 141 Patna3,309,383
- 147 Nagpur3,257,841
- 156 Kalyan-Dombivli3,163,424
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 Varanasi 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 Varanasi 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