Moscow, the capital of Russia, has the most populous metropolitan area in Europe.Europe and some parts of Africa and Asia by night. Lights reveal the urbanized areas of Europe. It also shows the Blue Banana megalopolis from north-west England to northern Italy, and the Golden Banana urbanized area between Genoa and Valencia.
This list ranks metropolitan areas in Europe by their population according to three different sources; it includes metropolitan areas that have a population of over 1 million.
Sources
List includes metropolitan areas according only to the studies of ESPON, Eurostat, and OECD. For this reason some metropolitan areas, like the Italian Genoa Metropolitan Area (with a population of 1,510,781 as of 2010[1]) or the Ukrainian Kryvyi Rih metropolitan area (with a population of 1,170,953 as of 2019[2]), are not included in this list, with data by other statistic survey institutes.
Population figures correspond to the populations of Functional urban areas (FUA). The concept of a functional urban area defines a metropolitan area as a core urban area defined morphologically on the basis of population density, plus the surrounding labour pool defined on the basis of commuting.
Figures in the first two population columns use a harmonised definition of a Functional urban area developed jointly in 2011, with delimitation basing on the DEGURBA method.[3][4]
Further information on how the areas are defined can be found in the source documents. These figures should be seen as an interpretation, not as conclusive fact.
This list has some of the population counts listed as sourced from ESPON not matching the data in their source. Population counts should be corrected to match the data in their referenced source.
This list mixes wikilinks to cities, greater cities, metropolitan cities, metropolitan areas, metropolitan counties, and metropolitan regions (in their own national definition, not the Eurostat one for which the population is listed) in the first column. All wikilinks should point to an existing or not article (or redirect) of a metropolitan area.
^ abcPart of the Randstad polycentric urban region consisting of the metropolitan areas of Amsterdam (2,497,000), Rotterdam (1,904,000), The Hague (1,404,000), and Utrecht (982,000). The total population of the region is 6,787,000.
^ abThe Flemish Diamond metropolitan region, which consists of the metropolitan areas of Brussels, Antwerp, Gent, and Leuven, has a total population of 5,103,000.
^Total population is 4,251,000 if the metropolitan area of Mataro (169,000) is included.
^Part of the wider Öresund region, which includes the Danish metropolitan area of Copenhagen (1,881,000) and the Swedish metropolitan areas of Malmö (667,000) and Helsingborg (294,000). The total regional population is 2,842,000.
^Part of the Rhein-Main metropolitan region with a total population of 4,149,000, which additionally includes the metropolitan areas of Darmstadt (501,000), Wiesbaden (453,000), and Mainz (431,000).
^ abPart of the polycentric Katowice-Ostrava metropolitan area with a total population of 5,294,000. The region includes the metropolitan areas of Katowice (3,029,000) Ostrava (1,046,000), Bielsko-Biała (584,000), Rybnik (526,000) and Racibórz (109,000).
^Part of the wider Lille-Bassin Minier region with a total population of 3,115,000.
^Lists Málaga (1,048,764) and Marbella (239,929) as two separate metropolitan areas.
^Lists Málaga (887,146) and Marbella (343,167) as two separate metropolitan areas.
^Total population is 844,000 if the metropolitan area of Vélez-Málaga (69,000) is included.
^Lists Mannheim (683,000) and Ludwigshafen (453,000) as two of eight FUAs within the Rhein-Neckar poly-FUA (2,931,000).
^Does not include Aix-en-Provence, which OECD, unlike INSEE, considers as a separate metropolitan area, with a population of 243,615 in 2020.
^Part of a wider Milan polycentric metropolitan area with a total population of 6,011,000.
^Total population is 3,271,000 if the metropolitan area of Augsburg (606,000) is included.
^Part of a wider polycentric metropolitan area with a population of 3,714,000.
^Lists Nottingham (919,484) and Derby (486,831) as two separate metropolitan areas.
^Lists Ostrava (539,358) and Havířov (211,775) as two separate metropolitan areas.
^Part of a wider polycentric urban region with a population of 1,778,000.
^Lists Portsmouth (542,040) and Southampton (687,971) as two separate metropolitan areas.
^Lewis Dijkstra, Hugo Poelman (2012-03-01). Cities in Europe - The new OECD-EC definition(PDF) (Report). p. 2. Retrieved 2024-06-08. Until recently, there was no harmonised definition of 'a city' for European and other countries member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This undermined the comparability, and thus also the credibility, of cross-country analysis of cities. To resolve this problem, the OECD and the European Commission developed a new definition of a city and its commuting zone in 2011. […] Each city is part of its own commuting zone or a polycentric commuting zone covering multiple cities. These commuting zones are significant, especially for larger cities. The cities and commuting zones together (called Larger Urban Zones) account for 60 % of the EU population.
