Sri Lanka’s population stood at 21,781,800 at the time of the 15th Census of Population and Housing conducted in 2024, according to results released by the Department of Census and Statistics. The figure represents an increase of 1,422,361 people since the previous census in 2012.
Women now make up 51.7 per cent of the population, and outnumber men in every district of the country — a uniformity unusual at the global level. The sex ratio fell to 93.3 males per 100 females from 93.8 in 2012, continuing a long-running tilt towards a female majority.
Gampaha District has overtaken Colombo as the most populous in the country, with 2,436,142 residents compared with Colombo’s 2,375,415. Kurunegala ranks third with 1,768,156. Mullaitivu, in the war-affected north, remains the least populous district with 122,619 residents.
The age structure points to a country still in demographic transition. Around 13.3 million people fall in the working-age band of 15 to 59, while approximately 4.5 million are children under 14 and 2.7 million are aged 65 and above — a rising share that will continue to pressure the pension and healthcare systems through the late 2020s.
The 2024 enumeration was the first Sri Lankan census to be conducted entirely digitally, with around 15,000 tablets and smartphones deployed in place of paper forms. Census officials have described the methodological shift as the largest in the survey’s history and credit it with shortening the processing window between fieldwork and the release of district-level results.
