Population Statistics
Carrickfergus
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Mid and East Antrim · Northern Ireland

Carrickfergus population

29,208people · latest estimate

Photo: Stewart, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By James Burfield, SEO consultant, Bath · Page updated · GeoNames · World Gazetteer 2005

Carrickfergus has a population of 29,208, making it the largest place in Mid and East Antrim. In 2005 the World Gazetteer recorded 29,208, a rise of 0.0% since.

29,208
in 2005
+0.0%
since 2005
The 2005 figure is from the World Gazetteer archive and may draw its boundary differently from the current source, so treat the change as indicative. Sources: method.

Year-by-year official estimates for the wider area: Mid and East Antrim population trends, 2001–2024.

Carrickfergus in context

9 km
south-west to Newtownabbey, the nearest larger town
123,216
people live within 10 km
#449
largest of 6,358 UK places
Carrickfergus in the UK

Distances are straight-line from the settlement's recorded coordinates. The 10 km figure sums the recorded places within that radius, so it describes how built-up the surroundings are rather than people per square kilometre.

The population, measured on a real boundary

What you meanPopulationSource
Carrickfergus settlement
NISRA's settlement boundary: the built-up Carrickfergus
27,886Census 2021
Carrickfergus (GeoNames record)
the figure in this page's heading; boundary unstated
29,208GeoNames

The census figure is NISRA's Census 2021 count of usual residents inside the settlement's development limit: a boundary drawn in 2014–15 holding 2021 people, so growth at the edges since then sits outside it. 12,132 households. Where the rows disagree, quote the census. Northern Ireland's other layers wait on data that is either licensed (postcodes) or published only at district level (crime), and those absences are deliberate.

Common questions

What is the population of Carrickfergus?
The populated place itself holds 29,208 residents. The wider Mid and East Antrim council area recorded 139,913 in 2024. Each figure describes a different boundary and all are correct; the meanings table on this page says which is which, because a population without its boundary is not an answer.

Go deeper

Population since 2001
Mid and East Antrim, year by year from ONS estimates

Nearby in Mid and East Antrim

#PlacePopulation
1Ballymena28,932
2Larne18,421
3Greenisland5,073
4Whitehead3,697

All 11 places in Mid and East Antrim →