[2][3] The main inhabited islands were Kunashir, Iturup and Urup in the south, and Shumshu in the north.

Other islands either had small populations (such as Paramushir) or were visited for fishing or hunting.

There may have been a small mixed Kuril–Itelmen population at the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

When the Kuril Islands passed to Japanese control in 1875, many of the northern Kuril Ainu evacuated to Ust-Bolsheretsky District in Kamchatka, where about 100 still live.

In the decades after the islands passed to Soviet control in 1945, most of the remaining southern Kuril Ainu evacuated to Hokkaidō, where they have since been assimilated.