Welcome to Winnipeg — population 850K, and counting By: Kevin Rollason Posted: 6:39 PM CST Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026 Last Modified: 7:46 PM CST Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026 Updates

For the first time, there are more than 850,000 people who can call themselves Winnipeggers.

“Growth is something, I believe, to celebrate,” Mayor Scott Gillingham said Tuesday, pointing to Statistics Canada figures showing Winnipeg’s population now sits at 850,260.

“It comes with great opportunity; it comes with some challenges as well. Growth is indicative, I believe, of people choosing Winnipeg, choosing to live here, choosing to invest here, choosing to raise their families here,” the mayor said. “So it creates a sense of momentum in many ways.”

The population in Winnipeg is up more than 8,000 from 842,015 in 2024 and by almost 80,000 from 2021.

Gillingham said the stats show Winnipeg is on the way to a million residents — which the city estimates should happen in about 25 years.

“We’re only 150,000 people away from a million people,” he said. “If you look at the metropolitan area, there’s over 950,000 people so we’re pushing a million population.”

While growth is exciting, it comes with challenges, the mayor said, noting demand for city services — transit, recreation services, police, paramedics, firefighters — will only increase.

Meron Haile, who emigrated from Ethiopia last year with her five-year-old daughter, said she loves nearly everything about her new home.

“It is good, except for the weather — the snow,” she said laughing.

“But I do feel like this is my community. My village. Everything is so close to where I live. Stores, a school. And it is a safe place. This is where I will raise my daughter, get a job and be a good citizen.”

Haile, who is training to be a health-care aide, hopes to help grow the city in the years to come.

“I tell my family and friends to come here — I’m trying to bring my mom here in future.”

Coun. Janice Lukes said a lot of the city’s population growth has occurred in her Waverley West ward at the south end of the city. City statistics show the ward has grown from 58,194 residents in July 2021 to 70,983 in July 2024, a 22 per cent jump.

“We’re rocking and rolling in the south,” Lukes said. “I’m at 71,000 people and (councillors) are supposed to have 45 to 50,000. There will be a ward boundary review, not before this (October) election, but before the next one.

“But 850,000 people — that’s quite something — and I feel they all moved to my ward.”

Lukes said she believes immigration is behind most of the explosive growth, but that is changing.

“It is stopping with the (federal government) clamp on,” she said. “But the clamp will only be on for a year or two because we need immigration to grow. We need to get housing built, and figure out health care, and then we need to open it up again because of our aging demographic.

She mentioned the University of Manitoba and Grand Mosque as two big draws in the south end of the city.

The StatCan data show steady population growth for all of the province’s largest cities and rural municipalities except Thompson, with 12,917 residents in 2024, a decrease of nearly 600 from 2021.

The figures show Brandon’s population is 59,444, Steinbach is at 21,671, and Winkler is at 16,156. The Rural Municipalities of Hanover and Springfield are at 19,950 and 17,494 respectively.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca