Roubaix Population and Area (Nord)
Largest city in France 2026: up-to-date figures for Roubaix (Nord)
Roubaix: Population and Area
With 98,701 inhabitants (INSEE total population in force on January 1, 2026), Roubaix is the 44th most populous town in France in 2026 and the 3rd most populous in the Nord department, out of 647 communes. It covers 13 km² (14,120th largest area in France, 101st largest in the department), with a population density of 7,460 inhabitants per km², or 68 times the national average (110 inhabitants/km²), which ranks it 76th in France for density.
Roubaix is located in the Nord department (59), in the Hauts-de-France region (formerly Nord-Pas-de-Calais), where it ranks 4th by population out of 3,782 communes. The most populous town in the Nord department is Lille (240,109 inhabitants); the department is home to 2,645,946 people over 5,743 km².
See the full ranking of communes in the Nord department and the regional ranking: largest city in Hauts-de-France.
Towns of similar size in the Nord department: Lille (pop. 240,109), Tourcoing (pop. 99,346), Dunkerque (pop. 87,442), Villeneuve-d'Ascq (pop. 63,462), Valenciennes (pop. 43,966).
Sources: INSEE, official population figures in force on January 1, 2026 (total population); areas: IGN / Observatoire des territoires; INSEE code 59512. Rankings are calculated across the 34,858 communes of metropolitan and overseas France in our database.
Roubaix, a major city of the Lille metropolitan area
Together with Tourcoing, Roubaix is one of the two large twin cities in the north of the Métropole Européenne de Lille, and the fourth-largest town in Hauts-de-France, just behind its twin Tourcoing. Its size is a pure product of the Industrial Revolution: in a single century, a village of a few thousand souls became the world capital of wool, the "city of a thousand chimneys," drawing workers from all over Flanders.
A very dense city reinventing itself
One of the most densely populated towns in France, built of courées (workers' housing courts), mansions and factories, Roubaix lost part of its population when the textile industry ended and is now among the poorest large cities in the country. Yet it invented mail-order retail, with La Redoute and Les 3 Suisses, houses a renowned museum in a former Art Deco swimming pool, hosts the finish of the Paris-Roubaix race, and is betting on higher education, innovative textiles and digital technology to regain its appeal in the shadow of Lille.