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In 2026, approximately 23.17 million people lived in the São Paulo metropolitan area, making it the biggest in Latin America and the Caribbean. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country. The second place for the region was Mexico City with 23.02 million inhabitants.

Brazil's cities

Brazil is home to two large metropolises, only counting the population within the city limits, São Paulo had approximately 11.45 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro around 6.21 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well-known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte, and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 88 percent of inhabitants living in cities.

Mexico City

Mexico City's metropolitan area ranks seventh in the ranking of most populous cities in the world. Founded over the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in 1521 after the Spanish conquest as the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the city still stands as one of the most important in Latin America. Nevertheless, the preeminent economic, political, and cultural position of Mexico City has not prevented the metropolis from suffering the problems affecting the rest of the country, namely, inequality and violence. Only in 2023, the city registered a crime incidence of 52,723 reported cases for every 100,000 inhabitants, and around 24 percent of the population lived under the poverty line.