None of Taiwan's three provincial cities has the 500,000 people that the Local Government Act now sets as the floor for a city. On the Ministry of the Interior's household register at the end of August 2026, the largest of them, Hsinchu City, had 455,783. Taiwan's 22 top-tier local governments (台灣22縣市) are six special municipalities (直轄市), three provincial cities (市) and thirteen counties (縣), and the count of 22 dates from 25 December 2010.
Every figure below comes from one table, the Department of Household Registration's county table for end-August 2026 (民國115年8月底), the latest month published on 1 October 2026. It counts people on the household register, the 戶籍: where a person is registered, which is not always where they live.
The household register puts most registered people in the special municipalities
The register holds 23,224,721 people on 36,197 square kilometres. We summed its rows by type: the six special municipalities hold 16,235,971 of them, 69.9%, on 30.1% of the land. The thirteen counties hold 25.5% on 69.0% of the land, and the three provincial cities 4.6% on 0.8%. New Taipei is the largest at 4,035,947, and Lienchiang, the Matsu islands, the smallest at 13,625. Changhua, at 1,201,686, is the largest county.
| Division | Type | Registered population | Land (km²) | Per km² |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taipei City 臺北市 | special municipality | 2,421,830 | 271.8 | 8,910 |
| Hsinchu City 新竹市 | provincial city | 455,783 | 104.2 | 4,376 |
| Chiayi City 嘉義市 | provincial city | 261,453 | 60.0 | 4,356 |
| Keelung City 基隆市 | provincial city | 357,905 | 132.8 | 2,696 |
| New Taipei City 新北市 | special municipality | 4,035,947 | 2,052.6 | 1,966 |
| Taoyuan City 桃園市 | special municipality | 2,357,912 | 1,221.0 | 1,931 |
| Taichung City 臺中市 | special municipality | 2,866,851 | 2,214.9 | 1,294 |
| Changhua County 彰化縣 | county | 1,201,686 | 1,074.4 | 1,118 |
| Kaohsiung City 高雄市 | special municipality | 2,707,022 | 2,952.1 | 917 |
| Kinmen County 金門縣 | county | 137,208 | 151.7 | 905 |
| Tainan City 臺南市 | special municipality | 1,846,409 | 2,191.7 | 842 |
| Penghu County 澎湖縣 | county | 106,529 | 126.9 | 840 |
| Yunlin County 雲林縣 | county | 646,458 | 1,290.8 | 501 |
| Lienchiang County 連江縣 | county | 13,625 | 28.8 | 473 |
| Hsinchu County 新竹縣 | county | 598,316 | 1,427.5 | 419 |
| Miaoli County 苗栗縣 | county | 529,282 | 1,820.3 | 291 |
| Pingtung County 屏東縣 | county | 778,014 | 2,775.6 | 280 |
| Chiayi County 嘉義縣 | county | 469,622 | 1,903.6 | 247 |
| Yilan County 宜蘭縣 | county | 448,065 | 2,143.6 | 209 |
| Nantou County 南投縣 | county | 466,401 | 4,106.4 | 114 |
| Hualien County 花蓮縣 | county | 310,777 | 4,628.6 | 67 |
| Taitung County 臺東縣 | county | 207,626 | 3,515.3 | 59 |
Place names are the forms the ministry and the National Land Surveying and Mapping Center use: 臺 in official Chinese, where everyday writing often has 台, and older English spellings such as Kaohsiung and Keelung rather than Hanyu Pinyin. Our guide to how Taiwan passport names are spelled explains why the spellings vary.
Article 4 sets a floor that no provincial city reaches
The Local Government Act, Article 4, sets the population for a special municipality at 「一百二十五萬人以上」, 1.25 million or more, and for a city at 500,000 to under 1.25 million. All six special municipalities clear their line; the smallest, Tainan, has 1.85 million on the register. None of the three provincial cities clears that line. Keelung has 357,905 registered people, Hsinchu City has 455,783, and Chiayi City has 261,453. Hsinchu County, at 598,316, is larger than any of them. That is not a breach. Article 4(5) says cities that existed before the Act need not meet the thresholds, which is also how Chinese-language references explain the gap.
Article 3 puts counties and cities on the same tier under a province, and Article 14 makes special municipalities, counties and cities, and the townships beneath them, the self-governing bodies. As arithmetic only, Changhua County fell below the 1.25 million line during 2022, from 1,255,330 at the end of 2021 to 1,245,239 at the end of 2022; the Act also asks for special need, so the number alone says nothing about any upgrade.
The density column ranks Kinmen above Tainan
On registered population, Taipei has 8,910 people per square kilometre and Taitung 59, a ratio of about 151. Kinmen, with 905, ranks tenth, above Tainan's 842, and Penghu is within three of Tainan. That ranking is about the register, and on Kinmen the register and the residents are far apart. A Kinmen County Government statistician, writing in the government accounting journal 主計月刊 in December 2018, reported that at the 2010 census only 37.1% of the people registered in Kinmen lived there, and that the other 62.9% was the highest such share in Taiwan. For 2017, the article estimated Kinmen's civilian resident population at 50,601, and put the register at 2.7 times that. We have not applied a 2017 ratio to 2026.
Area moves too. The smallest division is Lienchiang, at 28.8 square kilometres, not Chiayi City. Kaohsiung has grown by 5.8555 square kilometres since the 2010 mergers, exactly the three reclamations of port land its table's footnotes record, and another footnote records an earlier one on Chiayi County's coast, in 2009. The table also counts 368 townships and districts, the tier below the 22.
A footnote in the December 2010 file dates the current map
The ministry's November 2010 table lists 25 units: two special municipalities, five provincial cities and eighteen counties. The December 2010 table lists only 22, with a footnote explaining that on 25 December, Taipei County became New Taipei, while Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung each merged their city and county into a single special municipality. The date is set by the Act: Article 87-1 makes an upgrade take effect on the day the sitting mayors' terms end. Taoyuan County became Taoyuan City on 25 December 2014 by the same rule, which changed the mix to six, three and thirteen but not the total.
The provinces above them were emptied out rather than abolished. A 1998 regulation, in force from 21 December 1998, moved the Taiwan Provincial Government's work to central agencies or to the counties and cities, and the Act's Article 2 now calls a provincial government a branch of the Executive Yuan, not a self-governing body. The ministry's tables still group Kinmen and Lienchiang under Fujian Province (福建省), and the Executive Yuan's Kinmen-Matsu service centre records that the Fujian Provincial Government stopped operating on 31 December 2018.
A household office's letter table still lists four units that are gone
Every Taiwan national ID number (身分證字號) begins with a letter for the county or city that assigned it. Tainan's Madou household registration office publishes the 26: four of them, L for 臺中縣, R for 臺南縣, S for 高雄縣 and Y for 陽明山, name administrative units that no longer exist, while I (Chiayi City) and O (Hsinchu City) are current. New Taipei kept Taipei County's F and Taoyuan City its county's H. The same office's history says numbers have been assigned at birth registration since July 1969. The letter records the office that assigned the number, and nothing more about the person.
Until 1 October 2026, our Taiwan counties reference carried population figures that matched no single month of this table, returned 15 rows for the letter A and all 22 for Y, and called I and O former counties. It now reads every figure from the end-August 2026 table and finds each letter's own row.
A decade of monthly files shows Taoyuan rising and Taipei falling
From August 2016 to August 2026, the register fell 1.24%, from 23,516,841 to 23,224,721, and eight of the 22 grew. Taoyuan grew most, by 10.55%, followed by Hsinchu County, Lienchiang, Hsinchu City, Penghu, Taichung, Kinmen and New Taipei. Taipei fell 10.26%, a loss of 276,761 registrations, and Chiayi County 9.15%. The six special municipalities' share rose from 69.0% to 69.9%. The table records registrations, not reasons. In the twelve months to August 2026, only five of the 22 grew.
The same monthly series marks the day the order at the top changed. At the end of July 2017, Taichung's register passed Kaohsiung's, 2,778,182 to 2,777,873, a margin of 309; a month earlier Taichung had been 1,444 behind.
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