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Date oficiale · National Institute of Statistics (INS)

The population of Romania

How many people Romania has, on 1 January of each year, by the two measures the National Institute of Statistics publishes — which are not the same thing.

Resident population

19,041,322 people

2026 · provisional

−1,829 (−0.01%) vs 2025

Population by domicile

21,646,220 people

2026

−105,645 (−0.49%) vs 2025

The “Resident population” series

Series high
21,627,509 people2003
Series low
19,041,322 people2026 · provisional
Years published
24since 2003

Trends

Resident population · solid linePopulation by domicile · dashed line
The population of Romania, All years The annual trend of Population, from 1992 to 2026, in people. Resident population: a trecut de la 21,627,509 la 19,041,322. Population by domicile: a trecut de la 23,143,860 la 21,646,220. The exact figures are in the table below. 18,000,000 20,000,000 22,000,000 24,000,000 maxim 21,627,509 19,041,322 21,646,220
Resident population · solid linePopulation by domicile · dashed line
The population of Romania, Last 10 years The annual trend of Population, from 2017 to 2026, in people. Resident population: a trecut de la 19,643,949 la 19,041,322. Population by domicile: a trecut de la 22,236,154 la 21,646,220. The exact figures are in the table below. 19,000,000 20,000,000 21,000,000 22,000,000 23,000,000 maxim 19,643,949 19,041,322 21,646,220

Population by urban and rural

The same resident population, split by INS into the urban and the rural environment, on 1 January of each year. The two add up exactly to the figure above, in all twenty-four published years.

Urban

9,792,308 people

2026 · provisional

+21,942 (+0.22%) vs 2025

Rural

9,249,014 people

2026 · provisional

−23,771 (−0.26%) vs 2025
Urban · solid lineRural · dashed line
Population by urban and rural The annual trend of Population by urban and rural, from 2003 to 2026, in people. Urban: a trecut de la 11,434,118 la 9,792,308. Rural: a trecut de la 10,193,391 la 9,249,014. The exact figures are in the table below. 8,000,000 9,000,000 10,000,000 11,000,000 12,000,000 maxim 11,780,104 minim 9,770,366 9,792,308 9,249,014

The boundary between urban and rural is not statistical but administrative. Legea 351/2001 ranks the network of localities: rank 0 is the Capital, ranks I–II are municipalities, rank III are towns — all of them urban localities — and ranks IV–V are the villages, that is the rural environment. When a commune is declared a town, a few thousand people move from rural to urban without anybody having moved house.

For that reason the gap between the two lines reads as a change of classification just as well as a movement of people, and over short spans the first explanation is often the right one. The total changes in neither case.

The last 12 years. The figures are in people.
Period Urban Rural
2026 9,792,308 prov. 9,249,014 prov.
2025 9,770,366 9,272,785
2024 9,896,372 9,171,918
2023 9,940,807 9,114,421
2022 9,959,432 9,083,666
2021 10,316,028 8,913,491
2020 10,474,555 8,879,784
2019 10,463,886 8,961,987
2018 10,506,097 9,027,384
2017 10,531,819 9,112,130
2016 10,636,418 9,124,167
2015 10,703,051 9,172,491

What it means

The resident population is the number of people — Romanian citizens, foreigners and stateless persons — whose usual residence is on the territory of Romania. Usual residence is the place where a person normally spends their daily rest period, and to be counted in a place they must have lived there for at least 12 uninterrupted months before the reference moment. Those who have emigrated are excluded, those who have immigrated are included.

The population by domicile is something else entirely: the number of people with Romanian citizenship and a domicile on the territory of Romania, that is the address on their identity document. Here no account is taken either of the usual residence or of the length or reason of absence from the domicile. A Romanian who left ten years ago stays in this figure and is missing from the other. That is why the two differ by over 2.6 million people, and why the gap grows year by year.

Which of them is “the population of Romania” depends on the question, and INS says so explicitly: for international comparisons only the resident population is used, computed under the European regulations; the population by domicile is used for national purposes, being required by Romanian law, in particular by the law on local public finance. This page's headline figure is the resident one.

The resident population is not counted but estimated: from administrative sources, from data received from the statistical institutes of Spain and Italy, from the Eurostat migration database and from an econometric model for the international migration component, starting from the data of the most recent available census. For 2002–2011 the series was re-estimated to be comparable with the 2011 census.

INS declares no break in the series at the switch to the 2021 census base, but the figures move atypically at that point: between 1 January 2021 and 1 January 2022 the resident population falls by 186,421 people, the largest fall of recent years, and some counties shift by over 7%. The values before and after 2022 are published by INS in the same series, but they are not strictly comparable with one another.

Population by county

The resident population of each county on 1 January, the same measure as the headline figure above. INS publishes the territorial profile only from 2012.

The page has figures for 42 counties of 42. Added up, the 42 counties give 19,041,322 people in 2026, against 19,041,322 people for the country as a whole. The figures match exactly.

The values for 2026, in people.
# county people
1 Bucharest Municipality 1,713,832 prov.
2 Iași 781,948 prov.
3 Cluj 701,564 prov.
4 Prahova 683,460 prov.
5 Timiș 672,972 prov.
6 Constanța 656,512 prov.
7 Suceava 648,164 prov.
8 Ilfov 619,461 prov.
9 Dolj 594,523 prov.
10 Bacău 590,169 prov.
11 Brașov 564,632 prov.
12 Argeș 561,864 prov.
13 Bihor 558,623 prov.
14 Mureș 519,813 prov.
15 Galați 486,387 prov.
16 Dâmbovița 475,812 prov.
17 Maramureș 451,086 prov.
18 Neamț 444,666 prov.
19 Arad 410,058 prov.
20 Sibiu 396,679 prov.
21 Buzău 393,136 prov.
22 Botoșani 386,529 prov.
23 Olt 372,181 prov.
24 Vaslui 363,247 prov.
25 Hunedoara 349,011 prov.
26 Vâlcea 337,988 prov.
27 Vrancea 330,157 prov.
28 Satu Mare 330,046 prov.
29 Alba 324,901 prov.
30 Teleorman 308,440 prov.
31 Gorj 306,938 prov.
32 Bistrița-Năsăud 298,129 prov.
33 Harghita 292,267 prov.
34 Călărași 277,347 prov.
35 Brăila 269,804 prov.
36 Giurgiu 258,793 prov.
37 Ialomița 247,409 prov.
38 Caraș-Severin 240,283 prov.
39 Mehedinți 226,429 prov.
40 Sălaj 210,335 prov.
41 Covasna 199,596 prov.
42 Tulcea 186,131 prov.

All counties, on one page

The population of the county seats

MIND THIS, a different measure: at locality level INS publishes no resident population, only the population by domicile — how many people have their identity document registered there, wherever they actually live. The figures here are NOT to be compared with those above and do not add up to the national resident total.

The page has figures for 42 towns of 42.

The values for 2026, in people.
# town people
1 București 2,108,049
2 Iași 370,437
3 Cluj-Napoca 324,860
4 Timișoara 292,819
5 Constanța 291,980
6 Galați 288,873
7 Brașov 282,707
8 Craiova 278,599
9 Oradea 212,775
10 Ploiești 205,427
11 Bacău 182,980
12 Brăila 180,124
13 Arad 164,631
14 Pitești 160,262
15 Sibiu 160,228
16 Târgu Mureș 137,273
17 Baia Mare 133,356
18 Vaslui 131,722
19 Buzău 118,200
20 Suceava 115,336
21 Râmnicu Vâlcea 111,574
22 Satu Mare 110,409
23 Botoșani 110,103
24 Piatra-Neamț 104,420
25 Drobeta-Turnu Severin 96,373
26 Bistrița 94,646
27 Târgu Jiu 89,104
28 Focșani 85,334
29 Târgoviște 85,122
30 Tulcea 77,647
31 Slatina 76,456
32 Reșița 76,155
33 Alba Iulia 74,137
34 Călărași 68,519
35 Zalău 66,139
36 Deva 63,068
37 Giurgiu 59,934
38 Sfântu Gheorghe 59,845
39 Slobozia 47,366
40 Alexandria 44,451
41 Miercurea Ciuc 39,358
42 Buftea 23,360

History

The last 24 years. The figures are in people.
Period Resident population Population by domicile
2026 19,041,322 prov. 21,646,220
2025 19,043,151 21,751,865
2024 19,068,290 21,849,217
2023 19,055,228 21,953,617
2022 19,043,098 22,028,486
2021 19,229,519 22,138,604
2020 19,354,339 22,211,708
2019 19,425,873 22,215,217
2018 19,533,481 22,221,895
2017 19,643,949 22,236,154
2016 19,760,585 22,273,309
2015 19,875,542 22,312,887
2014 19,953,089 22,346,178
2013 20,020,074 22,390,978
2012 20,095,996 22,433,741
2011 20,199,059 22,480,599
2010 20,294,683 22,516,004
2009 20,440,290 22,541,941
2008 20,635,460 22,561,686
2007 21,130,503 22,582,773
2006 21,257,016 22,614,980
2005 21,382,354 22,648,514
2004 21,521,142 22,688,392
2003 21,627,509 22,733,751

Source: National Institute of Statistics (INS), matrices POP105A, POP107A. Period covered: 1992 – 2026. See the source. Figures marked “provisional” or “semi-final” may be revised by INS.

Both figures are as of 1 January. The resident population begins in 2003, the one by domicile in 1992. INS revises these series constantly, and some of the years were recomputed after their first publication; the value shown is already the corrected one, which is why it carries no marking. County figures exist only from 1 January 2012.