This quiz lists the 1,000 biggest cities in the world. Name as many of them as you can.
The map starts empty. Each city that you name shows as a dot at its location, and a bigger city gets a bigger dot.
More than a quarter of the list is in China, and more than one city in ten is in India. A player who knows only the capitals finds many new names here.
How to play
Start to type. The answer bar checks each letter, so you do not press Enter.
English names, local names and old names are accepted. "Bombay" counts for Mumbai, and "Peking" counts for Beijing.
A city inside a bigger urban area counts as that area. "Yokohama" names Tokyo, and "Kobe" names Osaka.
When two cities have the same name, one answer names both of them. The list has two cities called Suzhou and two called Hyderabad.
Some names are the start of a longer name. The shorter name scores immediately. If you continue to type the longer name, the longer name scores too.
Point to a dot, or tap it, to see the city's rank, country and population.
The timer counts up. Select give up to show the cities that you missed and to save your score.
What counts in this quiz
The 1,000 urban agglomerations with the most people in 2025, from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects 2018.
The population figures are the UN projections for 2025. The UN made them from census data before 2018.
An urban agglomeration is a city together with its suburbs and the towns that touch it. Each country defines its own areas, and the UN uses those definitions.
Some areas have two names, such as Dallas-Fort Worth. Each of the names counts.
The smallest city on the list has about 650,000 people.
Each dot is at the point that the UN gives for the city.
What's not included, and why
A city inside a bigger urban area is not on the list alone. Yokohama, Kobe and Giza are examples. Their names still count for the bigger area.
City limits are not used. A city whose limits include a large rural area, as many Chinese cities do, counts with its urban area only.
The UN 2025 revision is not used. It draws cities on a population grid, and that grid joins towns into long belts that nobody calls a city.
Good to know
Tokyo is the biggest city on the list, with about 37 million people.
China has 264 cities on the list, more than any other country. India has 101 and the United States has 78.
The list has cities in 138 countries and territories.