Countries by population, 2050 (projected)

What the projection is

This table ranks the same entries as the 2025 list, but by the value the World Bank series gives for 2050. Those values are not measurements. They carry today's patterns of fertility, mortality and migration forward and add them up country by country, giving 9.61 billion for the total counted here, against 8.19 billion in 2025. The "Rank in 2025" column is the position in the earlier table, and "Change" is the difference between the two positions, so an up arrow means the country is projected to pass others and a down arrow that others pass it.

How much the order moves

Among the 216 entries, 195 change position and 21 keep exactly the same rank. In the top ten, 1 of the ten places are held in 2050 by a country that was outside the top ten in 2025. Central African Republic gains the most places and Ukraine loses the most, but those are the extremes of a long middle in which small gaps decide the order. When two projected populations differ by a few percent, the order between them is not something the data can settle.

Why countries rise and fall

Three things set a projected path. Countries with high fertility and many young people keep adding people for decades even after birth rates begin to fall. Countries with fertility below about 2.1 births per woman and an older population start to shrink unless migration offsets it. And a few small places move because of migration far more than births. In this series 63 entries are projected to have fewer people in 2050 than in 2025, which is 29% of the list.

How to use it

• Look for trends rather than exact places: "among the five largest" is safer than "fourth".
• Compare a country's 2025 and 2050 columns to see whether it grows or shrinks, then open its page for the whole curve from 1960.
• For a pair of neighbours whose order may change, use the comparer and drag the slider to 2050; the line chart shows when they cross.

What it leaves out

Total population only. The projection does not include shocks: a conflict, a pandemic, a sudden change of migration policy, a famine. It also says nothing about the quality of life or economic weight behind a number, and it assumes the underlying estimate for 2025 was right. If the 2025 starting point is revised, every later value moves with it.

Source

World Bank, "Population, total" (SP.POP.TOTL), population estimates and projections, built from United Nations and national statistics and available under CC BY 4.0. The shares, rank changes and counts above are computed from that series on this site. Details and the other indicators are on the sources page.

The ten largest then and now

The projected top ten in 2050 is India, China, United States, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia, DR Congo, Brazil, Bangladesh. The 2025 top ten is India, China, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Ethiopia in the table's earlier ranking, shown here by their 2025 positions. Comparing the two lists shows which large countries are projected to hold their place and which are overtaken. The projected top place is India with 1,679,589,259 people, which is 17.5% of the total counted for 2050.

Why the world total matters here

Shares of a projected total depend on every other entry. If several large countries grow more slowly than the series assumes, every remaining share rises, even if nothing changes in the country you are looking at. That is why the table gives counts and ranks rather than shares. The total for 2050 is the sum of 216 projections, so errors in many small projections add up, and they do not necessarily cancel.

Using it in writing

If you quote this table, say "projected" and "World Bank series" with it, give the year, and avoid precise place numbers for entries that are close to their neighbours. A sentence such as "projected to be among the five largest countries in 2050" is supported by the table when the country is in the first five rows; "projected to overtake country X in 2050" is better checked on the comparer, where the crossover year appears and can be seen to sit in the projected section of the line.

Before you cite a place number

Look at the neighbours in the table first. If the entries just above and below a country are within a few percent of its population, a rank of, say, twelfth could just as easily be eleventh or thirteenth under slightly different assumptions. The table prints the exact projected figure so you can see how big each gap is.

Questions

Is this a forecast?

No. It is a continuation of current trends. A forecast would have to guess events, and this does not.

Why do some entries have no rank change?

Their position is the same in both years. A dash in the Change column means no movement.

Where is the year-by-year view?

On each country page and in the comparer, which shows every year from 1960 to 2050 with the projected years marked.