The top 50 largest cities and towns in Australia (2026 update)

Melbourne and Sydney

Melbourne remains the largest city in Australia by the SUA measure with 5,328,274 people, growing at 2.0% in 2024–25. Sydney reached 5,219,674, up 1.4% over the year. The gap has widened slightly to 108,600 people.

By the more widely used Greater Capital City Statistical Area measure (a definition primarily based on capital city labour markets), Sydney remains the larger city. This is primarily because Greater Sydney includes the Central Coast (Gosford, Wyong etc.), while the Sydney SUA does not. Central Coast will likely never be contiguous with the built-up area of Sydney due to the presence of the Hawkesbury River, but it is included in the GCCSA as it is part of the Sydney labour market, with a substantial proportion of the workforce commuting into Sydney areas. If you were to add in Newcastle and Wollongong to Sydney (to be fair also adding Geelong to Melbourne – to get a roughly 150km radius of predominantly urban area around each city) on that measure Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong is over 600,000 people larger than Melbourne-Geelong. As with all these things, it just depends where you draw the boundaries.

Changes in the rankings

The rankings remain largely stable from the previous year. The main movements are at the bottom of the list:

• Bunbury (WA) has moved up from #24 to #23, overtaking Rockhampton for the first time. Bunbury has grown consistently, up 8.0% over five years.
• Morisset–Cooranbong (Lake Macquarie area, NSW) continues its rapid climb, moving from #49 to #47 on the back of 15.5% growth over five years – the highest five-year percentage growth of any area in the list. It has now overtaken both Kalgoorlie–Boulder and Victor Harbor–Goolwa.
• Victor Harbor–Goolwa (SA) moves from #50 to #49, growing at 1.7% in the last year.
• Mount Gambier (SA) drops from #48 to #50, tied with Alice Springs at exactly 30,875 people.
• Alice Springs (NT) has grown to 30,875 – exactly matching Mount Gambier – and sits at equal number 50. We’ve never had two cities in the top 50 with exactly the same population before!
• Tamworth (#35) and Busselton (#36) are separated by just one person – 46,024 versus 46,023. Busselton has grown faster (12.4% over five years versus 4.3% for Tamworth) and is likely to overtake in the next update.

Warragul–Drouin (Vic) continues to be a standout inner-regional growth story, up 15.0% over five years, almost matching Morisset-Cooranbong. Interestingly the latter is about the same distance from Sydney as Warragul-Drouin is from Melbourne (around 110km).

How urbanised is Australia?

These 51 cities (due to the tie including both Mount Gambier and Alice Springs) account for 23,236,533 people – 84% of Australia’s total population of 27.6 million. That figure underscores just how concentrated the nation’s population is in its urban areas.

The concentration intensifies at the top: 38% of all Australians live in just the two largest cities, and 62% live in the top five. Gold Coast–Tweed Heads has passed 760,000 and is on a trajectory to become Australia’s sixth million-person city, though at current growth rates that is still more than a decade away.

Notably, none of the 50 areas recorded a decline in population over five years. Only Launceston recorded a slight fall over one year (−0.1%).

Note: Total adds to 53 due to four cross-border urban areas counted in both states: Gold Coast–Tweed Heads (Qld/NSW), Albury–Wodonga (NSW/Vic), Mildura–Buronga (Vic/NSW) and Canberra–Queanbeyan (ACT/NSW).

NSW has the greatest number of cities in the top 50, with 18, reflecting its large number of mid-size coastal and inland regional centres. Queensland has 11. Victoria has 10, including several growing regional centres. Western Australia’s six entries reflect strong growth across Perth and a number of regional hubs. Cross-border cities have been counted in both states and territories they cover.