According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), al-Dirbasiyah had a population of 8,551 in the 2004 census.

It is the administrative center of a nahiyah ("subdistrict") consisting of 113 localities with a combined population of 55,614 in 2004.

[1] The majority of the inhabitants of the town are Kurds and Arabs and a smaller Assyrian minority.

[3][4] The Syrian Army entered the town in October 2019, as part of the Second Northern Syria Buffer Zone Agreement.

[5] On 16 July 2020, an unknown UAV suspected to be Turkish carried out a strike against a Russian coordination point south of al-Dirbasiyah.