The largest city in Ukraine is Kyiv, the capital, with roughly 2.9 million residents, followed by Kharkiv (1.4M), Odesa (1.0M), Dnipro (0.98M), Donetsk (0.93M), Zaporizhzhia (0.72M), Lviv (0.72M), Kryvyi Rih (0.61M), Mykolaiv (0.48M) and Mariupol (0.43M). Together these ten cities anchor the urban life of a nation of around 44 million people, spread across the largest country lying entirely within Europe.
The Ten Largest Ukrainian Cities
Ukraine's biggest cities form a clear hierarchy, with Kyiv standing far above the rest before a tighter cluster of regional capitals and industrial centres:
- Kyiv — around 2.9 million; the political, financial and cultural capital.
- Kharkiv — around 1.4 million; the leading city of the northeast.
- Odesa — around 1.0 million; the country's main Black Sea port.
- Dnipro — around 0.98 million; a centre of heavy industry and aerospace.
- Donetsk — around 0.93 million; historic heart of the eastern coal region.
- Zaporizhzhia — around 0.72 million; home to major metallurgy and hydropower.
- Lviv — around 0.72 million; the cultural capital of western Ukraine.
- Kryvyi Rih — around 0.61 million; a vast iron-ore mining city.
- Mykolaiv — around 0.48 million; a shipbuilding hub near the Black Sea.
- Mariupol — around 0.43 million; a steel-producing port on the Sea of Azov.
These figures reflect pre-war estimates; actual populations have shifted significantly due to displacement, and several cities have seen dramatic changes in recent years.
Kyiv: The Capital and Largest City
Kyiv dwarfs every other Ukrainian city, holding more than twice the population of second-place Kharkiv. Founded over 1,500 years ago and once the centre of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus, it sits on the Dnipro River and serves as the seat of government, the financial core and the busiest transport hub in the country. Landmarks such as the gold-domed Saint Sophia Cathedral and the cave monastery of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, drawing visitors to one of Eastern Europe's oldest urban centres.
Industrial Heartland of the East and South
Several of the top ten cities owe their size to natural resources and heavy industry. Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Kryvyi Rih developed during rapid 19th- and 20th-century industrialisation, built around iron ore, coal, steel and machine-building. Kryvyi Rih in particular is one of Europe's most important iron-mining centres and stretches for many kilometres along its ore deposits. To the south, Odesa, Mykolaiv and Mariupol are tied to the sea — Odesa as Ukraine's grand port city, Mykolaiv for shipbuilding, and Mariupol for steel exports across the Sea of Azov.
West Versus East: A City of Two Halves
Lviv represents a different tradition. Located near the Polish border, it spent centuries under Polish and Austro-Hungarian rule, leaving a cobblestoned old town of Habsburg-era architecture that is itself a World Heritage Site. It is often called the cultural and intellectual capital of western Ukraine. This contrast — between the historically Central European west and the more heavily industrialised, Russian-influenced east — is one of the defining features of Ukraine's urban geography, and it shapes language, architecture and identity from one city to the next.
How Ukraine Compares
With roughly 44 million people before recent upheavals, Ukraine was among the most populous countries in Europe. Yet only one of its cities, Kyiv, comfortably exceeds two million, and just two more pass the one-million mark. Compared with neighbours such as Russia or Poland, Ukraine's population is relatively spread out across many medium-sized regional capitals rather than concentrated in a single dominant megacity. This network of substantial cities — each a regional administrative centre — helps explain why Ukrainian life feels decentralised, with strong local identities in places like Kharkiv, Odesa and Lviv. Want to test how well you know the world's cities and capitals? Try our interactive geography games.
Every Figure Here Predates the Invasion
Ukrainian city populations are usually quoted from the 2001 census, the only one conducted since independence, adjusted by later estimates. A census planned for 2020 was postponed and then overtaken by events.
Since February 2022 the distribution has changed more than in any European country since the Second World War. Millions of Ukrainians have left the country, millions more are displaced internally, and the movement has been overwhelmingly from east to west.
Lviv, Uzhhorod and the western cities absorbed very large numbers. Mariupol, besieged and largely destroyed in 2022, had around 430,000 residents before the war and a fraction of that afterwards. Any ranking of Ukrainian cities today describes the pre-war country.
Kyiv Is Older Than Most European Capitals
Kyiv was the centre of Kyivan Rus, the medieval state from which Ukraine, Russia and Belarus all trace descent, and it was a major city when Moscow was forest. Traditional founding dates put it in the fifth century.
Saint Sophia Cathedral, begun in the eleventh century, and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, the cave monastery founded in 1051, are together a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Golden Gate was the main entrance through the city walls of Yaroslav the Wise.
The city's metro includes Arsenalna station, at around 105 metres the deepest in the world, built that deep because of the terrain above and usable as a shelter, which is what it has been since 2022.
The Industrial East and the Habsburg West
Ukraine's cities divide along a line that runs roughly down the Dnipro, and the difference is historical rather than arbitrary. The east and south industrialised under the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, built around coal in the Donbas, steel in Kryvyi Rih and Mariupol, and rocket engineering in Dnipro.
The west spent centuries under Poland-Lithuania and then Austria-Hungary. Lviv was Lemberg, a Habsburg provincial capital, and its old town is a World Heritage Site with a central European character quite unlike Kharkiv or Zaporizhzhia.
Those histories produced different linguistic balances, different religious affiliations between the Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches, and different political voting patterns, all of which were visible in every Ukrainian election before 2022.
Odesa Was Built as a Free Port
Odesa was founded by decree in 1794 on the site of an Ottoman fortress, and it was granted free-port status in 1819, which turned it into the Russian Empire's main grain export outlet and one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the Black Sea.
Greeks, Italians, Jews, French and Armenians settled it, and the resulting culture produced a distinct dialect, a comic tradition and writers including Isaac Babel. The Potemkin Stairs descending to the port became one of the most famous sequences in cinema.
UNESCO inscribed the historic centre in January 2023 and simultaneously placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger, an unusual step reflecting the risk from ongoing strikes on the port.
Chernobyl Emptied a City in Thirty-Six Hours
Pripyat was built in 1970 to house workers at the Chernobyl nuclear plant and held around 49,000 people, with an average age under thirty. After the reactor explosion on 26 April 1986 the entire population was evacuated by bus within a day and a half and never returned.
The exclusion zone covers around 2,600 square kilometres and remains largely uninhabited, though a small number of elderly returnees live there and it has become a substantial wildlife refuge.
Slavutych was built afterwards to rehouse the plant's workforce, the last city founded in the Soviet Union. The sarcophagus over the reactor was replaced in 2016 by the New Safe Confinement, an arch slid into place over the ruin and designed to last a century. The regions named here are mapped in our Ukraine country guide.
Kharkiv Was the Capital First
Kharkiv served as the capital of Soviet Ukraine from 1919 until 1934, when the seat of government moved to Kyiv. The period left it with a monumental constructivist centre, including Derzhprom, a 1928 government complex that was among the first reinforced-concrete high-rise structures in Europe.
It became a major centre of science, engineering and tank manufacturing, and its university, founded in 1804, is among the oldest in the region. The city sits about forty kilometres from the Russian border and has been under sustained bombardment since 2022.
Dnipro, further south, was closed to foreigners entirely until 1987 because of its missile and space industry. Yuzhmash, its main plant, built the launch vehicles for much of the Soviet programme, and the city's absence from the map for four decades is one of the odder facts of Ukrainian urban history.
Common Questions About Ukrainian Cities
What is the largest city in Ukraine?
Kyiv is by far the largest city in Ukraine, with a population of approximately 2.9 million. It is also the national capital and the country's leading economic and cultural centre.
Is Kyiv bigger than Kharkiv?
Yes. Kyiv's population of around 2.9 million is more than double that of Kharkiv, which sits in second place at roughly 1.4 million people.
How many cities in Ukraine have over one million people?
Three cities clearly exceed one million residents: Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa. Dnipro sits just below the mark at about 0.98 million, placing it close behind.
What is the main port city of Ukraine?
Odesa is Ukraine's most important port city, located on the Black Sea coast with a population of roughly one million. Mykolaiv and Mariupol are other significant coastal cities.
Is it Kyiv or Kiev?
Kyiv is the transliteration from Ukrainian and is now standard in English-language usage, adopted by most governments, media and international bodies since 2019. Kiev is the older transliteration from Russian.
Which was Ukraine's largest city before 2022?
Kyiv, at roughly three million, followed by Kharkiv at about 1.4 million and Odesa at around one million. Mariupol, at approximately 430,000, was largely destroyed during the 2022 siege.