It covers an area of roughly 26,000 square kilometres (10,000 sq mi) and is home to more than 5.1 million inhabitants.

On 1 January 2006 the office of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region opened, as agreed in a state treaty of cooperation (Staatsvertrag über Zusammenarbeit) between Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein.

[3] As of 2005, the Hamburg Metropolitan Region was made up of the city of Hamburg along with numerous rural districts in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, altogether comprising 800 cities, towns and municipalities with an overall land area of 19,802 square kilometres (7,646 sq mi).

[4] Since then it has expanded to cover the districts of Ludwigslust-Parchim (partially from 2012, entirely from 2017)[5] and Nordwestmecklenburg (from 2012)[6] in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

[9] The Larger Urban Zone covers only the city of Hamburg and its directly neighbouring districts.