Demographics of Sydney

In the 2021 census, 5,231,147 persons declared themselves as residents of the Sydney Statistical Division–about one-fifth (20.58%) of Australia's total population.

Sydney overtook Melbourne as Australia's most populous city in the early twentieth century, and reached the million inhabitants milestone around 1925.

Coupled with successive governments' willingness to release new land on the city's outskirts for further development, this history has given Sydney a low-density self-image.

Foreign countries of birth with the greatest representation are Mainland China, India, England, Vietnam and the Philippines.

[2] 42.0% of people in Sydney speak a language other than English at home with Mandarin (5.0%), Arabic (4.2%), Cantonese (2.8%), Vietnamese (2.2%) and Hindi (1.5%) the most widely spoken.

[22] As of the 2021 Census, the most common responses for religion in Greater Sydney were Christian (45.8%), Islam (6.3%), Hinduism (4.8%), and Buddhism (3.8%).

Geographic distribution of the main ethno-cultural communities of Sydney according to the 2016 census [ 1 ]
Map of the median age of Sydney residents by Postal Area in the 2011 census
The Great Synagogue of Sydney, constructed in 1878
Sydney population density by mesh blocks (MB), according to the 2016 census