This article details the list of the most populous settlements in
Malaysia. Malaysia designates all populated regions into three categories: a district, municipality, or city. While district boundaries are limited to individual state-drawn district boundaries, some municipalities and cities are made up of several smaller component districts whose elevated status forms a local government. Thus, this list does not include component districts and only includes overall administrative localities defined by their respective local governments.
This table lists all cities, municipalities and districts in Malaysia whose population exceeds 250,000 people, according to statistics published in the
2020 Malaysian census by the
Malaysian Department of Statistics (DOSM). There are 34 populated regions in Malaysia whose population exceeds 250,000 people. All 13 states and the
Federal Territories have at least one city, municipality or district whose population exceeded 250,000 people.
There are 34 settlements in Malaysia with a population of over 250,000 people. All 13 states and the Federal Territories have at least one settlement in the list.
West Malaysia has more settlements that fit this criterion than
East Malaysia, with 29 settlements against the East's five. The states with the least amount of settlements in this list are
Kelantan,
Melaka,
Negeri Sembilan,
Pahang,
Perak,
Perlis,
Terengganu and the
Federal Territories, with one locality each respectively, while the state with the highest amount of settlements with a population above 250,000 is
Selangor, with 10 settlements in the list.
The DOSM does not provide any definitions related to
metropolitan areas in Malaysia, nor have any statistical calculations that concern
build-up areas surrounding an urban centre. However, several major urban regions, such as the
Klang Valley, the
George Town Conurbation and the
Johor Bahru Conurbation (Southern Conurbation), have been well-described as metropolitan areas since the early-2010s by local media and government authorities in the latest edition of the National Physical Plan. Despite this, there remains some ambiguity in defining the actual boundaries of other smaller counterparts.
There are 12 metropolitan areas in Malaysia.
Perlis and
Kelantan are the only states without one. The George Town Conurbation, the only urban region that spans three different states (
Penang,
Kedah and
Perak), is also the only metropolitan area where the core city is not its most populated settlement (
George Town has a population of 794,313, while
Seberang Perai has a population of 946,092).
This table displays:
The metropolitan area rank by population as of 2020, as estimated with individual local authority population figures by the DOSM;
^The present municipal government administering the regions of Seremban had merged with the now-defunct Nilai municipal government (of the town of Nilai) in 2020.[17]
^Listed in the latest edition of the National Physical Plan, it includes Johor Bahru, Senai, Skudai, Kulai, Pasir Gudang, Tanjung Pelepas, Pontian, Kota Tinggi, Desaru, Pengerang and Bandar Tenggara.