🌅 Megacities by 2050

Author

Sunrise Stat
April 28, 2025

67 - The number of “megacities” the world will have by 2050.

Uncover the power of a single statistic: Sign up for Sunrise Stat to find your intellectual clarity.

SOURCE
WHAT TO KNOW

  • Oxford Economics researchers predict the world will have 67 megacities—cities with populations of 10 million or more—by 2050, up from 44 today. Africa will see the most growth among megacities, jumping from 5 in 2024 to 12 in 2050, though Asia—home to around two-thirds of the world’s current megacities—will continue to have the most.

WHY IT MATTERS

  • Megacities with older demographic profiles in more developed nations, like Paris, Seoul, and Tokyo, will see the share of their population aged 65+ expand more quickly than younger cohorts, forcing the cities to rely on net migration to meet the demands of their aging populations. In Tokyo, positive net migration won’t be enough to overcome the city’s natural age change, meaning the overall population is expected to decline.

CONNECT THE DOTS

  • Seoul’s aging population is part of a broader trend in South Korea, which has exacerbated the country’s main population-related problem: it also has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. In 2024, the country’s fertility rate (i.e., the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime) reached 0.75 per person, a slight increase from 0.72 in 2023 but still well below the fertility replacement rate of 2.1.