Limoges Population and Area (Haute-Vienne)
Largest city in France 2026: up-to-date figures for Limoges (Haute-Vienne)
Limoges: Population and Area
With 131,817 inhabitants (INSEE total population in force on January 1, 2026), Limoges is the 30th most populous town in France in 2026 and the most populous in the Haute-Vienne department, out of 195 communes. It covers 78 km² (433rd largest area in France, 3rd largest in the department), with a population density of 1,689 inhabitants per km², or 15 times the national average (110 inhabitants/km²), which ranks it 549th in France for density.
Limoges is located in the Haute-Vienne department (87), in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region (formerly Limousin), where it ranks 2nd by population out of 4,293 communes. It is the most populous town in the Haute-Vienne department, which is home to 379,464 people over 5,520 km².
See the full ranking of communes in the Haute-Vienne department and the regional ranking: largest city in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
Towns of similar size in the Haute-Vienne department: Saint-Junien (pop. 11,677), Panazol (pop. 11,520), Couzeix (pop. 10,328).
Sources: INSEE, official population figures in force on January 1, 2026 (total population); areas: IGN / Observatoire des territoires; INSEE code 87085. Rankings are calculated across the 34,858 communes of metropolitan and overseas France in our database.
Limoges, the second-largest city in Nouvelle-Aquitaine
The prefecture of the Haute-Vienne department and the historic capital of the Limousin, Limoges is the second-largest town in the vast Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, far behind Bordeaux but ahead of Poitiers, Pau and La Rochelle. On the western foothills of the Massif Central, at the first ford on the Vienne river, it has been since antiquity the city of an entire rural area, for which it provides services, the university and the regional teaching hospital.
The capital of the "arts of fire"
The worldwide fame of Limoges comes from its enamels in the Middle Ages and then from its porcelain, born of the discovery of kaolin in 1768; the city is now a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Its very large municipal territory includes forests and countryside, which gives it a low density for a city of its rank. The population has eroded slightly since the 1990s, but the city relies on the electrical industry, luxury goods such as footwear and leather goods, and the Limoges CSP basketball team, which carries the city's name across Europe.