World Urbanization Prospects 2025
World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Summary of Results highlights the key findings of the 2025 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, offering an overview of global urban transformation. It integrates worldwide and regional trends with detailed country-level insights spanning from 1950 to 2050, showing that the world is becoming increasingly urban, with cities now home to 45 per cent of the global population of 8.2 billion. This is more than double the share in 1950. The report summarizes the latest estimates of city, town and rural populations for 237 countries or areas from 1950 to 2025, with projections until 2050.
Click here for the full report.
Key messages based on World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Summary of Results, prepared by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA).
World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Dataset
The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations has been issuing for several decades revised estimates and projections of the urban and rural populations of all countries in the world and of their major urban agglomerations. The World Urbanization Prospects presents findings which are consistent with the size of the total population of each country as estimated or projected in the 2024 Revision of World Population Prospects.
This report provides a detailed overview of the methodology used to produce the 2025 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects dataset, prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat.
Click here for the full report (under construction)
World Urbanization Prospects: Launch Events
Bjørg Sandkjær, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs introduced the World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Summary of Results report at a press briefing on 18 November 2025.
18 November 2025, 12:45pm EST
Press Briefing Room, S-237, United Nations Headquarters, New York
Broadcast on UN WebTV
- Statement by Bjørg Sandkjær, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination, UN DESA
- Statement by John Wilmoth, Director of the Population Division, UN DESA
- Presentation by Sara Hertog, Population Division, UN DESA
UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) side event
18 November 2025, 14:30 to 15:00 EST/16:30 to 17:00 BRT (video recording)
SDG Pavilion, Belém, Brazil
Human Planet Forum 2025: People and Planet: Shared Understanding for Informed Action (concept note) (live stream)
19–21 November 2025
European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra (VA), Italy
