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Population rankings

Interactive, sortable rankings of the world’s countries by population in 2024, 2050 and 2100, from UN projections.

The league table of the world’s most populous countries looks stable year to year, but over decades it is rewritten completely. India has already overtaken China at the top. On the UN’s medium projection, Nigeria climbs past the United States around mid-century, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo keep rising, and by 2100 five of the ten largest countries are projected to be African. Meanwhile China, Japan and most of Europe are already shrinking, some of them fast enough to lose a third or more of their population by century’s end.

Each ranking below is a sortable table built from the same dataset as the rest of the site: UN World Population Prospects 2024, medium variant, with 2024, 2050 and 2100 side by side so you can see the trajectory, not just the snapshot. Every country name links to its full profile with a live counter, charts and downloads.

Browse rankings

Largest countries in 2100
How the population table is rewritten by century's end.
Fastest-growing countries
Where the world's population growth is concentrated.
Shrinking populations
The countries projected to lose the most people.
Countries that have already peaked
Nations now past their maximum population.
Africa's century
The largest African countries in 2100.