Jakarta surpassed Tokyo as the world's largest city in 2025

Tokyo is the world's largest city by population

Home to over 41 million people, the megacity used to be a humble fishing village called Edo. Since Japan opened to foreign trade in the mid-1800s, Tokyo has made significant economic advances and achieved numerous milestones in public transportation, urban planning and culture.

Visualizing the world's population centers

What does population density look like on a global scale? These detailed 3D renders illustrate our biggest urban areas and highlight population trends.

View the countries with the most internet users, including 94% of those in high-income nations

As of 2025, the four most populous nations—China, India, the US, and Indonesia—are also the ones with the most internet users, collectively accounting for almost half of the 6.04 billion internet users worldwide. This suggests that population size, rather than adoption rate, is a better predictor of online activity.

Geneva, Switzerland, has some of the highest grocery prices worldwide

Other cities that made the top 20 on the list of the global cities with the highest grocery prices around the world include Boston, Hong Kong, and Toronto, at least as of 2025.

Ranking the world’s economies: 1980 vs. 2025

The US remains the world’s largest economy, having increased its annual gross domestic product from $2.9T in 1980 to $30.6T in 2025. In 1980, China ranked seventh globally with a GDP of $304B. In 2025, China ranked second with a GDP of $19.4T.

Explore plans for smart cities expected to be built by 2050

Locations such as Net City in China, Woven City in Japan, and NEOM in Saudi Arabia are expected to incorporate green energy, AI, and advanced transportation system technologies to enhance air quality, reduce congestion, and minimize pollution by significantly reducing personal car use.

During the Medieval Period, urban populations grew significantly

As workers moved from fields to cities throughout the era, large metropolises of enduring strategic importance were formed from Paris, France, to Baghdad, Iraq.

AI is estimated to drive most data center power demand growth through 2030

According to a report from the International Energy Agency, a typical AI data center in 2025 consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households, but the largest under construction are expected to consume 20 times as much. Global data center electricity consumption is expected to surpass Japan's total consumption by 2030.

The world’s top 20 cities for startups include San Francisco

In 2023, Singapore had the highest venture capital funding per capita in the world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best place to have a startup. In 2023, PitchBook analyzed data to determine the world’s best startup city, including fundraising activity, venture capital deals, and exit value. San Francisco ranked as No. 1. See which other locales landed in the top 20 with this graphic.

Mapping the world's 25 largest stock exchanges

Totaling a market capitalization of $106T (as of 2023), this map identifies the major stock exchanges worldwide on a map, ranking them by total market value. Nearly half of that value is located in the Americas.

Roughly 10% of the world's population is older than 65 (2023 data)

With recent advances in medicine, sanitation, and nutrition, expected lifespans have rapidly risen around the globe—resulting in a rapidly aging global population. The worldwide distribution has seen a nearly 600% jump in the population of people aged 65 and older.

America's happiest cities in 2023

WalletHub analyzed 180 cities using thirty indicators—like depression rate and average leisure time—to rank each city by the happiness of its residents. Check out the list to see how your city ranks.

There are over 800 annual marathons, but only seven deemed World Marathon Majors

The races—Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, Sydney, and New York City—are on some of the best-known courses in the world and are run by some of the sport’s top athletes.

As of 2025, the world's largest tropical cyclone spanned half the continental US

Typhoon Tip traveled across the western Pacific Ocean in 1979, achieving winds of 300 kilometers per hour. Though it weakened significantly before making landfall in Japan, its rainfall produced over 600 mudslides and killed 42 people.

National Geographic's list of best places to visit in 2023

National Geographic has released its latest Best of the World list with 25 must-see destinations for 2023 from Alberta, Canada, to Busan, South Korea.

How Japanese Anime became a global phenomenon

Anime's popularity was once confined to Japan, but the art form has attracted a global audience in the 2020s due in large part to its availability on streaming and increased watch times during the COVID-19 pandemic. This Hollywood Reporter article explains how other factors—including several influential celebrities who consider themselves anime aficionados—have made the genre an international sensation.

Inside the most crowded place on Earth

Once the densest place on Earth, Kowloon Walled City was a chaotic labyrinth of stacked homes, hidden corridors, and thriving underground life.

America’s largest Comic-Con by attendance takes place in New York City

New York Comic Con—held annually at New York City's Javits Center since 2006—draws around 200,000 attendees, features more than 570 panels and events, and hosts more than 1,250 exhibitors, making it North America’s biggest pop-culture convention by attendance.

See who attended Davos 2025

Each year, Davos draws one of the most exclusive guest lists in the world. In 2025, attendees included 60 heads of state, over 900 CEOs and corporate chairs, and top leaders from global civil society, who gathered in the Swiss Alps.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Japan has one of the largest debt-to-GDP ratios among developed countries

On the face of it, this appears to be a bad sign. But a closer look at Japan’s investment strategies reveals that its relatively high debt might be more sustainable than meets the eye.

The world's largest restaurant is the size of 10 football fields

The Bawabet Dimashq Restaurant in Damascus, Syria, has held the Guinness World Record for largest restaurant since 2008. It can seat 6,014 guests and employs nearly 1,800 people, who serve up an eclectic menu of Middle Eastern Indian, Arab, Iranian, Syrian, and Chinese dishes.

The title of 'World’s Largest Christmas Tree' is disputed

Cities in the US, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands all claim they have the world’s largest Christmas tree—ranging from massive evergreens, TV and communication towers, and hillside light displays.

We're in the middle of a decadeslong cholera pandemic

In 1961, the world's seventh recorded cholera pandemic started in South Asia, and it has continued through the decades. India and Bangladesh are at particular risk. This pandemic is driven partly by conflict, population displacement, extreme weather, and poor water infrastructure.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

The tournament in 2026 will have 48 teams

After 24 years of having a 32-team tournament, the FIFA World Cup will get an upgrade in 2026, expanding the field to make it the largest World Cup ever.

The fascinating urban planning experiment that birthed Brazil's capital city

In 1960, the country moved its capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília, a city in the middle of the country built from scratch in just four years.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Ebola species have historically been named after where they were discovered, stigmatizing residents who live there, including Bundibugyo, in Uganda.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in terms of casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace