With 36.6 million inhabitants, Dhaka has emerged as the world’s second-most populous city in 2025, trailing only the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, which has a population of 41.9 million.
A recent UN report notes that Bangladesh’s capital has experienced a remarkable population surge, rising from ninth place to second within just the past 25 years. With the current growth trend, the report predicts that Dhaka is set to overtake Jakarta as the world’s most populous city by 2050.
“Fast-growing Dhaka is expected to become the world’s largest city by mid-century. Karachi (Pakistan) will enter the top ten by 2030 and could rank fifth by 2050. Meanwhile, Tokyo is projected to fall in rank from third in 2025 to seventh in 2050, as its population shrinks to around 31 million,” states the report titled World Urbanization Prospects 2025, released this week by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
In 2000, Dhaka’s population was only 17.4 million, and over the following 25 years, it more than doubled to reach 36.6 million in 2025.
Tokyo, which had a population of 30.3 million in 2000, was the world’s most populous city at the time. However, with only marginal population growth over the past 25 years, the Japanese capital has now fallen to third place, with 33.4 million residents.
Following Jakarta, Dhaka, and Tokyo, the other seven cities in the current top-ten list are: New Delhi (30.2 million), Shanghai (29.6 million), Guangzhou (27.6 million), Cairo (25.6 million), Manila (24.7 million), Kolkata (22.5 million), and Seoul (22.5 million).
Shanghai and Cairo are new entrants in 2025, as they were not among the top ten most populous cities in 2000. In contrast, Mexico City and São Paulo—two major cities in the Americas that were in the top ten in 2000—did not make the list in 2025.
The UN report projects that by 2050, Dhaka will become the world’s most populous megacity, with a population of 52.1 million, surpassing Jakarta, which is projected to have 51.8 million residents.
Number of megacities continues to grow; over half are in Asia
The number of megacities—cities with 10 million or more inhabitants—has quadrupled from eight in 1975 to 33 in 2025, with 19 located in Asia. Projections indicate there will be 37 megacities globally by 2050, as populations in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (United Republic of Tanzania), Hajipur (India), and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) grow to over 10 million.
The total number of cities worldwide has more than doubled between 1975 and 2025. Among the world’s 12,000 cities, 96% have fewer than 1 million inhabitants, and 81% have populations below 250,000.
This distribution underscores that the majority of the world’s urban population resides not in megacities, but in small and medium-sized urban centers, which play a critical role in shaping sustainable urban development. By 2050, the world could have more than 15,000 cities, most with populations below 250,000.
