What are the 10 French cities ranked by popularity?

In order: Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Le Mont-Saint-Michel, Strasbourg, Montpellier and Tours.

What is the top 5 of French cities ranked by popularity?

Paris (1,056,828), Toulouse (489,489), Lyon (483,212), Marseille (430,645) and Nantes (427,644).

Which city is 2nd in the ranking of French cities ranked by popularity?

Toulouse, at 489,489, just behind Paris (1,056,828).

Is Paris really the French city ranked first on popularity?

Yes, at 1,056,828, ahead of Toulouse (489,489) and Lyon (483,212).

In which département is Paris?

Paris is in département 75, in the Île-de-France region.

What is the difference between Paris and Toulouse?

Paris is at 1,056,828, Toulouse at 489,489. The table gives the same figure for all 50 places, so any two of them can be compared the same way.

How many French cities does this ranking compare?

1,131, with the top 50 listed in full in the table below.

What are the French cities ranked by popularity in 2026?

This ranking uses the most recent official figures published as of 2026: Paris leads with 1,056,828.

Is there a complete ranking of French cities ranked by popularity?

Yes, the table below: the top 50 of 1,131, each with its département and its region, and the exact method and scope stated underneath it.

In order: Paris (1,056,828), Toulouse (489,489), Lyon (483,212), Marseille (430,645), Nantes (427,644), Bordeaux (358,761), Le Mont-Saint-Michel (347,983), Strasbourg (344,048), Montpellier (323,918), Tours (298,562).

Where does this figure come from?

Straight from Wikimedia, pageviews de Wikipédia en français, joined to each commune by its INSEE code and never retyped by hand. A commune the source does not cover is left out of the table rather than shown as a zero: an absence and a measured zero are different facts, and only one of them is safe to rank.

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The best-known cities in France on Wikipedia

Name: The best-known cities in France on Wikipedia
Creator: Le Bon Rang
License: https://www.etalab.gouv.fr/licence-ouverte-open-licence/

The best-known city in France is Paris, at 1,056,828 (popularity), ahead of Toulouse (489,489) and Lyon (483,212).

Could you put Lille, Strasbourg and Toulouse in this ranking's order? Le Bon Rang is that game, every day. Play today's game

Popularity, 1052 cities shown. The coloured surface adds up the values (Popularity) of every ranked city within about 30 km, so a cluster of neighbouring cities reads as one area. Exact city values remain in the table. 79 ranked overseas cities are not plotted: they fall outside this map's frame. Projection: longitude compressed by cos(46.3°N), so east-west and north-south distances stay comparable. Source: Wikimedia, pageviews de Wikipédia en français.

Find your town

Top 50 of 1,131 cities
Rank	City	Popularity	Population	Region
1	75 Paris	1,056,828	2,103,778	Île-de-France
2	31 Toulouse	489,489	514,819	Occitanie
3	69 Lyon	483,212	519,127	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
4	13 Marseille	430,645	886,040	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
5	44 Nantes	427,644	327,734	Pays de la Loire
6	33 Bordeaux	358,761	267,991	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
7	50 Le Mont-Saint-Michel	347,983	23	Normandie
8	67 Strasbourg	344,048	293,771	Grand Est
9	34 Montpellier	323,918	310,240	Occitanie
10	37 Tours	298,562	139,259	Centre-Val de Loire
11	93 Saint-Denis (93)	293,988	149,077	Île-de-France
12	06 Nice	293,753	357,737	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
13	49 Angers	293,269	159,022	Pays de la Loire
14	35 Rennes	287,587	230,890	Bretagne
15	59 Lille	279,190	238,246	Hauts-de-France
16	42 Saint-Étienne	263,520	173,136	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
17	63 Clermont-Ferrand	259,935	146,351	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
18	38 Grenoble	258,963	156,140	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
19	57 Metz	252,750	122,572	Grand Est
20	21 Dijon	243,413	161,830	Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
21	76 Rouen	239,011	117,662	Normandie
22	72 Le Mans	237,184	146,249	Pays de la Loire
23	64 Pau	233,617	80,441	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
24	17 La Rochelle	233,533	79,851	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
25	87 Limoges	231,371	129,937	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
26	54 Nancy	229,263	103,671	Grand Est
27	74 Annecy	228,899	132,117	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
28	84 Avignon	222,626	92,188	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
29	45 Orléans	218,846	116,357	Centre-Val de Loire
30	25 Besançon	217,950	118,489	Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
31	19 Brive-la-Gaillarde	216,069	47,095	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
32	51 Reims	214,710	177,674	Grand Est
33	87 Oradour-sur-Glane	211,145	2,550	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
34	86 Poitiers	207,565	89,916	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
35	11 Carcassonne	206,655	46,080	Occitanie
36	18 Bourges	205,208	64,186	Centre-Val de Loire
37	76 Le Havre	204,283	166,687	Normandie
38	14 Caen	204,198	109,400	Normandie
39	35 Saint-Malo	196,183	47,439	Bretagne
40	80 Amiens	195,282	136,449	Hauts-de-France
41	29 Brest	194,008	142,346	Bretagne
42	66 Perpignan	192,598	121,616	Occitanie
43	34 Béziers	192,492	81,545	Occitanie
44	13 Aix-en-Provence	190,831	149,695	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
45	62 Lens	189,958	32,920	Hauts-de-France
46	26 Valence	181,545	64,458	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
47	30 Nîmes	181,121	151,839	Occitanie
48	82 Montauban	180,502	62,945	Occitanie
49	43 Le Puy-en-Velay	179,633	18,540	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
50	10 Troyes	179,291	62,088	Grand Est

The table stops at 50. Search any of the 1,131 ranked towns ↑

The other end : The least-known cities in France on Wikipedia

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Scope, method and sources

Scope: France, metropolitan and overseas, Corsica and the DROM included. This dataset holds every commune of 10,000 inhabitants or more, plus smaller communes famous enough to be household names, 1,131 in all. It is not the full list of 35,000 French communes, so a village can sit outside a ranking whose extreme it would otherwise hold.

Method and sources: populations are the INSEE legal populations, boundaries and coordinates come from the IGN commune registry, both served by geo.api.gouv.fr. Density is the population divided by the commune's area; distances are measured as the crow flies from the commune's centre. Data read on August 28, 2026.

12 questions about this ranking

What are the 10 French cities ranked by popularity?: In order: Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Le Mont-Saint-Michel, Strasbourg, Montpellier and Tours.
What is the top 5 of French cities ranked by popularity?: Paris (1,056,828), Toulouse (489,489), Lyon (483,212), Marseille (430,645) and Nantes (427,644).
Which city is 2nd in the ranking of French cities ranked by popularity?: Toulouse, at 489,489, just behind Paris (1,056,828).
Is Paris really the French city ranked first on popularity?: Yes, at 1,056,828, ahead of Toulouse (489,489) and Lyon (483,212).
In which département is Paris?: Paris is in département 75, in the Île-de-France region.
What is the difference between Paris and Toulouse?: Paris is at 1,056,828, Toulouse at 489,489. The table gives the same figure for all 50 places, so any two of them can be compared the same way.
Which city is 10th in the ranking of French cities ranked by popularity?: Tours, at 298,562.
How many French cities does this ranking compare?: 1,131, with the top 50 listed in full in the table below.
What are the French cities ranked by popularity in 2026?: This ranking uses the most recent official figures published as of 2026: Paris leads with 1,056,828.
Is there a complete ranking of French cities ranked by popularity?: Yes, the table below: the top 50 of 1,131, each with its département and its region, and the exact method and scope stated underneath it.
What are the top 10?: In order: Paris (1,056,828), Toulouse (489,489), Lyon (483,212), Marseille (430,645), Nantes (427,644), Bordeaux (358,761), Le Mont-Saint-Michel (347,983), Strasbourg (344,048), Montpellier (323,918), Tours (298,562).
Where does this figure come from?: Straight from Wikimedia, pageviews de Wikipédia en français, joined to each commune by its INSEE code and never retyped by hand. A commune the source does not cover is left out of the table rather than shown as a zero: an absence and a measured zero are different facts, and only one of them is safe to rank.

The table below ranks the top 50 of the 1,131 cities in the dataset, each with its département, its region and the figure it is ranked on (popularity), so you can see not just the order but how far apart the places are. The numbers are official public data: INSEE legal populations and the IGN commune registry, with the exact method and the exact scope stated under the table rather than left to be guessed at.

The same data answers neighbouring questions too: see The least-known cities in France on Wikipedia and The French cities with the most bars per inhabitant, or all rankings for the full list. All of it comes from Le Bon Rang, a free daily game that gives you five French cities and one of these statistics and asks you for the order.