Mulhouse Population and Area (Haut-Rhin)
Largest city in France 2026: up-to-date figures for Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin)
Mulhouse: Population and Area
With 106,083 inhabitants (INSEE total population in force on January 1, 2026), Mulhouse is the 41st most populous town in France in 2026 and the most populous in the Haut-Rhin department, out of 366 communes. It covers 22 km² (6,821st largest area in France, 21st largest in the department), with a population density of 4,783 inhabitants per km², or 44 times the national average (110 inhabitants/km²), which ranks it 153rd in France for density.
Mulhouse is located in the Haut-Rhin department (68), in the Grand Est region (formerly Alsace), where it ranks 4th by population out of 5,115 communes. It is the most populous town in the Haut-Rhin department, which is home to 784,356 people over 3,525 km².
See the full ranking of communes in the Haut-Rhin department and the regional ranking: largest city in Grand Est.
Towns of similar size in the Haut-Rhin department: Colmar (pop. 68,013), Saint-Louis (pop. 23,072), Wittenheim (pop. 15,695).
Sources: INSEE, official population figures in force on January 1, 2026 (total population); areas: IGN / Observatoire des territoires; INSEE code 68224. Rankings are calculated across the 34,858 communes of metropolitan and overseas France in our database.
Mulhouse, the second-largest city in Alsace
A subprefecture of the Haut-Rhin department, Mulhouse is the second-largest city in Alsace, behind Strasbourg, and the largest in its department, at the center of a catchment area that is home to more than half of the Haut-Rhin's residents. An independent city-state allied with the Swiss until 1798, it became one of Europe's leading industrial centers, the "French Manchester" of textiles, then of chemicals, cars and mechanical engineering.
A young, cosmopolitan working-class city
The size of Mulhouse is that of a city built on labor: successive waves of immigration, from Switzerland to Italy, from North Africa to Turkey, give it one of the youngest and most diverse populations of any large French city. The closure of the DMC textile mill and the potash mines caused the population to fall at the end of the 20th century; today, the EuroAirport shared with Basel, cross-border jobs in Switzerland and a cluster of technical museums unique in Europe, covering cars, trains, electricity and fabrics, support a dense city at the center of an urban area far more populous than the city itself.