What are the top 5 countries with the largest Muslim populations in 2025?
Executive summary
Most available 2025 sources agree on the same broad ranking: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria appear as the five countries with the largest Muslim populations, with Indonesia by far the largest—commonly reported around 229–242 million Muslims (multiple sources) and global Muslim totals around 2.0–2.06 billion in 2025 [1] [2] [3]. Exact totals and ranks vary slightly by dataset and methodology; sources differ on the precise headcounts used for each country [4] [5] [3].
1. Indonesia: the uncontested leader
Indonesia is repeatedly identified as the country with the largest Muslim population in 2025, commonly cited at roughly 229–242 million Muslims and about 87% of its population; multiple listings place it at the top of country rankings [1] [5] [4]. That consistency across demographic sites and visualizations makes Indonesia the clearest first-place entry in 2025 reporting [5] [6].
2. Pakistan and India: close competitors with different contexts
Pakistan is consistently shown as the second-largest Muslim population by country in 2025, with estimates often near 200 million [4]. India is typically reported as the third-largest single-country Muslim population despite being a Hindu-majority nation; sources place India behind Pakistan but ahead of Bangladesh in absolute numbers [7] [4]. The key context: India’s large overall population means its Muslim minority is very large in absolute terms even if it is a minority nationally [7].
3. Bangladesh: high share, high rank
Bangladesh routinely appears among the top five, commonly placed fourth by Muslim population because of its high national share of Muslims and overall population size [7] [3]. Different datasets show small movement in absolute numbers depending on source-specific population estimates, but Bangladesh’s position in the upper ranks is stable across the reporting [7] [3].
4. Nigeria rounds out the top five — Africa’s largest contributor
Nigeria is frequently listed as the fifth-largest country by Muslim population in 2025, representing the largest Muslim population in Africa and completing the characteristic Asia-Africa mix of the world’s largest Muslim populations [7] [4]. This placement reflects Nigeria’s large national population and substantial Muslim share concentrated mainly in the north [7].
5. Why exact ranks and counts differ between sources
Different outlets use varying base data (national censuses, Pew projections, UN population revisions) and different years or projection methods; for instance, one dataset lists Indonesia at ~229 million [4] while other visualizations and summaries cite ~242 million [5] [6]. Global totals also vary—sources cite roughly 1.8–2.06 billion Muslims in 2025—reflecting differences in cutoffs, rounding and underlying demographic inputs [8] [3] [2]. That methodological divergence explains why precise headcounts and the narrow order between closely sized countries can shift across lists [4] [1].
6. What authoritative researchers say about trends (not just ranks)
Pew Research Center places emphasis on growth trends and projections: global Muslim numbers are rising and expected to continue increasing in coming decades, with the region distribution concentrated in Asia-Pacific and strong growth driven by age structures and fertility patterns [9] [10]. Pew’s longer-term projections and country-by-country breakdowns are commonly used as reference points for understanding why the largest national Muslim populations are where they are [9].
7. Competing viewpoints and limitations in coverage
Commercial and aggregated sites (WorldPopulationReview, DataPandas, Voronoi/VisualCapitalist replicas) provide quick rankings and headline numbers but draw on different primary data and sometimes different cut-off years; they also present slightly different global totals [1] [4] [5]. Peer-reviewed or methodological sources like Pew focus on projection methods and provide interactive tables for transparency, but specific 2025 single-year headcounts still vary by source [9]. Available sources do not mention a single universally agreed 2025 dataset that standardizes every country’s Muslim count, so small rank swaps among the middle entries are possible depending on the source used [4] [1].
Bottom line: multiple 2025 sources consistently list the top five by Muslim population as Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria, with Indonesia far ahead in absolute numbers; exact counts and tight rank-order between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh differ by dataset and methodology [5] [4] [7].