Jakarta Overtakes Tokyo As The World’s Largest City

If you’ve grown up answering quiz questions, you probably had “Tokyo” ready as the world’s biggest city. But here’s the twist — that’s no longer true. The top spot has shifted as Jakarta has now overtaken Tokyo and claimed the title. The United Nations has dropped a new report, and it’s turned the usual rankings upside down. The “World Urbanization Prospects 2025” report marks the first major update since 2018, a time when Tokyo dominated the charts and Indonesia's capital was still far down in 33rd place.

Jakarta sits at the top with nearly 42 million people, while Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, follows with around 36 million. The report by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Population Division even hints that Dhaka is on track to become the world’s biggest city by the middle of the century. Tokyo takes the third spot with around 33 million people, and right after that comes New Delhi in fourth place with about 30 million. Tokyo is expected to drop to seventh place by 2050 as other cities continue to grow at a faster pace.

Nine of the world’s ten biggest cities are now in Asia. The lone city from outside the continent is Cairo, sitting in seventh place with close to 26 million residents, more than twice the population of New York City. The other cities making up the top 10 were Shanghai, Guangzhou, Manila, Kolkata and Seoul. Back in 1975, only eight cities were big enough to be called megacities — a term used for urban areas with at least 10 million people. Fast-forward to 2025, and that number has jumped to 33, with Asia accounting for 19 of them. And according to the UN, the world could have around 37 megacities by 2050.

In 1950, just 20% of the world’s 2.5 billion people lived in cities. Since then, that number has more than doubled. By 2050, most of the population growth is expected to take place in cities, with smaller towns seeing the rest. Taken together, cities in India, Nigeria, DR Congo, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Ethiopia are expected to add over 500 million people between 2025 and 2050, more than half of the nearly 1 billion new city residents expected around the world. From 2015 to 2025, over 3,000 cities lost population, mostly smaller ones under 250,000 people. A third are in China, and 17% are in India. City growth doesn’t always match national trends, as some cities shrank even as their countries grew, and vice versa. Even some megacities, like Mexico City, saw their numbers fall despite their size.