Where Do the Most People Live in Million-Plus Urban Agglomerations? (2025)

A country can have a large urban population without having a particularly large share of its residents in million-plus metropolitan areas. World Bank series EN.URB.MCTY counts people living in metropolitan areas that had more than one million residents in 2018. Across the 121 country observations dated 2025, the median is about 3.63 million people. Korea records about 26.41 million and ranks 15th in this set. China has the largest value at about 460.16 million, followed by India and the United States.

The indicator counts people, not the number of million-plus cities

The World Bank title is Population in urban agglomerations of more than 1 million, code EN.URB.MCTY. The metadata defines the measure as the country population living in metropolitan areas that in 2018 had more than one million residents. A value of 20 million therefore does not mean that the country has one city of 20 million people. It can be the combined population of several qualifying urban agglomerations.

An urban agglomeration is not necessarily identical to an administrative city boundary. UN terminology focuses on a continuously urbanized territory and can include suburbs outside the core municipality. Metropolitan-area and city populations therefore depend on the geographic boundary used. That is one reason this series should not be expected to match a city-hall population count or a national census table that uses a different boundary.

The measure is also an absolute population count. It is not an urbanization percentage and it is not the share of national population living in million-plus agglomerations. Large countries can rank high simply because they have many residents as well as multiple large urban regions.

The 2025 median is 3.63 million, while the mean is 16.65 million

Giving each of the 121 observations equal weight, the median is 3.63 million and the simple mean is 16.65 million. The first quartile is 1.79 million and the third quartile is 11.51 million, so the middle half lies between roughly 1.79 million and 11.51 million. The mean is far above the median because China, India, the United States and several other large countries create a long upper tail.

Thirty-two observations are below 2 million and 36 are between 2 million and 5 million. Together those two groups account for 68 of the 121 countries. Nineteen are between 5 million and 10 million, another 19 are between 10 million and 25 million, eight are between 25 million and 50 million, and only seven exceed 50 million. The typical observation is therefore a few million people even though the largest values reach into the hundreds of millions.

China, India and the United States lead the ranking; Korea is 15th

China records about 460.16 million people in qualifying urban agglomerations, India 248.30 million and the United States 160.79 million. Brazil follows at 94.31 million and Japan at 80.94 million. Mexico and Pakistan both exceed 50 million, while Nigeria and Indonesia exceed 40 million.

Korea records about 26.41 million people and ranks 15th among the 121 observations. This is not the population of Seoul alone. EN.URB.MCTY is a national total across metropolitan areas that satisfy the series definition, so it should not be equated directly with Seoul municipality, the Seoul Capital Area, or any single domestic administrative boundary.

An absolute count is not a ranking of urban concentration

The large values for China and India reflect both the presence of very large urban agglomerations and the sheer size of their national populations. The indicator cannot by itself show which country is “most urbanized” or where residents are most concentrated in large cities. For those questions, a percentage indicator—such as the urban share of total population or the share living in million-plus agglomerations—provides a different denominator and a different interpretation.

The United States ranks third with about 160.79 million and Japan fifth with about 80.94 million, but those absolute counts do not tell us which country has the higher urbanization rate. A small country could have a very high share of residents in one metropolitan area and still rank low in absolute population. The map in this article answers “how many people,” not “what percentage of the country.”

Selected large economies show very different absolute totals

Large-population countries dominate much of the table, but the ordering also reflects how settlement is distributed across metropolitan systems. Germany, for example, records about 8.11 million in this series, below France at 15.87 million and the United Kingdom at 19.05 million. These differences are demographic and spatial measurements, not scores of economic performance or living standards.

The “more than one million” threshold is anchored to 2018

A crucial detail in the metadata is the 2018 reference for the threshold. The series counts residents of metropolitan areas that had more than one million people in 2018. The 2025 value is the population estimate for the selected agglomerations; it does not mean the eligibility list is re-created from scratch using 2025 city populations. An agglomeration that crossed one million only after 2018 should not automatically be assumed to enter this particular series.

The World Bank identifies the underlying source as the UN Population Division’s World Urbanization Prospects 2018. The figures therefore should not be treated as a substitute for a newly released municipal census count. National urban definitions, metropolitan boundaries and estimation methods can differ, and a city-level question may require a newer UN urban dataset or national statistical-office data.

How this differs from urbanization, urban population growth and largest-city population

The urbanization rate is the share of total population classified as urban. Urban population growth measures the annual rate of change in the urban population. The largest-city series focuses on one country’s largest metropolitan area. EN.URB.MCTY instead adds the population living across all qualifying million-plus agglomerations within each country. The concepts overlap, but they answer different questions.

That distinction matters when reading Korea’s 26.41 million figure. It is a number of people, not a percentage and not an annual growth rate. Comparing it directly with a 2025 urbanization percentage would mix units. A more complete view of urban structure comes from keeping absolute scale, population share and growth rate separate.

Source and map method

The statistical source is World Bank World Development Indicators series EN.URB.MCTY, with the World Bank citing UN World Urbanization Prospects 2018 as the underlying source. All 121 country rows used here are dated 2025, so the ranking does not mix older “latest available” observations with current-year values.

Because the absolute values are highly skewed, the map uses population bands of 1–2 million, 2–5 million, 5–10 million, 10–25 million, 25–50 million and 50 million or more. The median and ranking use all 121 statistical rows, not only countries that are easily visible as polygons on the map. A blank country should be read as missing from the 121-row comparison, not as a confirmed zero.

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