Frankfurt, Germany Population 2024

Frankfurt is the largest city in the German state of Hesse. It's also the fifth-largest city in the whole of Germany, with 731,095 people living within its administrative boundaries and 2.3 million in its urban area in 2015.

City Size and Population Density

The city of Frankfurt has a population density of approximately 3,000 per square kilometer (7,600/square mile). The total surface area the city claims comes to 248.3 square kilometers (about 95 square miles).

Frankfurt Population Demographics

The city of Frankfurt is culturally and ethnically diverse, with 51.2% of the population having an immigrant background in 2015. For the first time in the city's history, the majority of its residents had a non-German background. What's more, three-quarters of children under six had immigrant backgrounds, and 27.7% of those living in the city had foreign citizenship. Home to as many as 180 nationalities, Frankfurt is very much a multicultural city. It has large immigrant populations from countries such as Turkey, Italy, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Russia, Macedonia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Portugal, Spain France, China, the United States, Japan, Austria, the UK, Morocco, Pakistan and India. Frankfurt also has the second-largest Korean community in the whole of Europe, as well as Germany's largest Sri Lankan Tamil community.

Historically, Protestants dominated frankfurt. However, throughout the 19th century, more and more Catholics moved to the city, overtaking the number of Protestants. The Jewish community in Frankfurt dates to Medieval times and has always ranked among the largest in Germany. Frankfurt also has a sizeable Muslim community due to growing immigration starting in the 1960s. As of 2013, Roman Catholicism (22.7% of the population) and Protestantism (19.4%) were the most significant Christian denominations. It's estimated that the share of Muslim inhabitants in the city is approximately 12% (2006).

Population Growth

Central Frankfurt has been classed as a Großstadt (a city with a minimum of 100,000 residents) since 1875. It had 414,576 residents in 1910, making it the ninth-largest city in Germany, and as many as 553,464 before the start of World War II. At the end of the war in 1945, this number fell to 358,000 but soon climbed to a high of 691,257. The population dropped again in 1986 but has increased in the years since. Demographic forecasts predict that central Frankfurt will have a population of nearly 825,000 within its administrative boundaries in 2020 and as many as 2.5 million residents living in its urban area.

During the 1970s, Hesse's state government had wanted to include the whole urban area in its administrative boundaries. This would have made Frankfurt the second-largest city in the country after Berlin, with nearly 3 million residents. However, because the local authorities didn't give their agreement, the administrative territory remains a lot smaller than the urban area.