Algeria's population structure shows a slightly higher male to female ratio of 1.04 to 1, with a median male age of 29.35 years old and a median female age of 29.45 years old. The highest concentration of adults under 75 years old is in the 38 and 37 year-old age groups, while the lowest concentration is in the 74 and 73 year-old age groups.
Data after 2022 is projected based on recent change
* As of 5/15/2025
1 birth
Every 36.9 seconds
1 death
Every 2.4 minutes
1 emigrant
Every 19.2 minutes
1 person
Every 51.9 seconds
City | 2025 Pop. |
|---|---|
| Algiers | 1,977,663 |
| Boumerdas | 786,499 |
| Oran | 645,984 |
| Tebessa | 634,332 |
| Constantine | 450,097 |
| Biskra | 307,987 |
| Setif | 288,461 |
| Batna | 280,798 |
| Bab Ezzouar | 275,630 |
| Annaba | 206,570 |
Algeria was inhabited by several prehistoric people, including the Caspian culture, and many empires and dynasties have ruled the region over its history, such as the Romans, Byzantines and the Turkish Ottomans. At the beginning of the 20th century, Algeria had 4 million people.
Today, Algeria is inhabited mostly by Arab-Berber people, with 90% of the population living in the coastal area of the north with the people in the Sahara desert concentrated in oases. There are about 1.5 million remaining nomadic and semi-nomadic people in the country. Algeria is a young country, with 1 in 4 people under the age of 15. Interestingly, women play an important role here, making up 70% of Algeria’s lawyers and 60% of its university students.
97% of the Algerian population is Muslim. There aren’t really any other religions with a significant population. The second most popular religion is Christianity with a meager 285,000 followers.
About 96,000 refugees and asylum seekers are living in Algeria, most of whom are from Western Sahara. There are also about 35,000 Chinese migrant workers and up to 165,000 Sahrawis from Western Sahara in refugee camps. Between 600,000 to 2 million Algerian Turks live in Algeria, and they are today known as Kouloughlis.
The largest concentration of Algerians outside of the country are in France, with more than 1.7 million Algerians. Algeria is the second-largest French-speaking country in the world in terms of the number of speakers. An estimated 11 million Algerians read and write in French.
The French colonized Algeria during the mid-1800s and around 50,000 emmigrated there during that time. By the 1900s, Europeans accounted for 20% of the population. The French were eventually ousted in 1945 during a war than killed at least 700,000 Algerians.
The Algerians experienced a civil war from 1991-2002 that killed roughly 100,000.
