There are millions of Pashtuns who are living outside of their traditional homeland of Pashtunistan, a historic region that is today situated over parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Pashtun people, who are classified as an Iranian ethnolinguistic group, are believed to have settled in the traditional Pashtunistan region around the early 1st millennium CE.

[13][14] According to Ethnologue, the total Pashtun population currently stands at around 30 million,[15] but some sources give slightly lower or higher figures.

The ethnonym Afghan (of Persian origin) has been historically used since the 3rd century AD to refer to the Pashtuns, and is now used to describe every citizen of Afghanistan.

The city of Lashkargah in the south, Farah in the west, Jalalabad in the east, and Kunduz in the north are other prominent cultural centres whose populations are predominantly Pashtuns.

With as many as 7 million by some estimates, the city of Karachi in the Sindh province hosts the largest concentration of urban Pashtuns population in the world[22][23] Some important Pashtun cities of Pakistan include Peshawar, Quetta, Zhob, Loralai, Killa Saifullah,Swat, Mardan, Charsada, Mingora, Bannu, Parachinar, and Swabi.

[citation needed] However most of the land of Baluchistan is covered by Balochs and Brahuis while Pashtuns are concentrated only in the north of the province.

Pashtuns also make up a minority of the Chitral district, which is mainly inhibated by Kho and Kalasha people who speak Khowar.

[citation needed] In addition to this, some Urdu-speaking communities in Pakistan also trace their ancestry to the ancient Pashtun regions of Afghanistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhawa.

[28] Although their exact numbers are hard to determine, they are at least more than 100,000, for it is known that in 1954, over 100,000 nomadic Pakhtuns living in Kashmir Valley were granted Indian citizenship.

The Afridis and the Machipurians, who belong to the Yusufzai tribe, are liable to military service, in return for which they hold certain villages free of revenue.

[31] Pashto is also spoken in two villages, Dhakki and Changnar (Chaknot), located on the Line of Control in Kupwara district.

[32] In response to demand by the Pashtun community living in the state, Kashir TV has recently launched a series of Pushto-language programs.

[33] A further small, scattered Pashtun population still exists in some major cities of India with large Muslim populations, with the majority of Pashto-speaking individuals residing in the states of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh India; who also have adopted local languages of the respective areas they live in, as their second language.

[37] A small Hindu community, known as the Sheen Khalai meaning 'blue skinned' (referring to the color of Pashtun women's facial tattoos), migrated to Unniara, Rajasthan, India after partition.

[38] Prior to 1947, the community resided in the Quetta, Loralai and Maikhter regions of the British Indian province of Baluchistan.

[43][44] The Pashtun tribs in Zabol from other tribes such as Moradgholi, Kouchakzai, Ghaljaei, lakziyan, Galavi, Barakzai, Khajeali, and Sufi.

Pashtun diaspora in UK have made their presence felt through their restaurants with traditional names like Bab-eKhyber, Hujra, Kabuli pulao etc.

In the latter part of the 19th century several thousand men from Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Kashmir, Sind, Rajasthan, Egypt, Persia, Turkey and Punjab, but collectively known as "Afghans", were recruited during the initial British development of the Australian Outback, especially for the operation of camel trains in desert areas.

Countries like Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia, Myanmar also have similar cases of Pashtun settlements, which those who are of descent are quickly assimilated to the local Indian ethnic minority community while those recent migrants or settlers belong to the Pakistani diaspora, since most of the migrants came from Pakistan.