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List of cities in the United Kingdom

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ207474 ↗
Source-derived summary

This is a list of cities in the United Kingdom that are officially designated as such as of 29 August 2022. It lists those places that have been granted city status by letters patent or royal charter.

There are currently 76 such cities in the United Kingdom: 55 in England, eight in Scotland, seven in Wales, and six in Northern Ireland. Of these, 24 in England, two in Wales, and two in Northern Ireland have Lord Mayors; four in Scotland have Lord Provosts. In some cases, the area holding city status does not coincide with the built up area or conurbation of which it forms part. In Greater London, for example, the Cities of London and Westminster hold city status separately, but no other local authority in the London Region has been granted city status, nor has the Greater London Authority.

In other cases, such as the cities of Canterbury and Lancaster, the status applies to a local government district which extends over a number of towns and rural areas outside the main settlement proper. In England, city status sometimes applies to civil parishes, such as with Ripon; though the status may not apply to the local government district which share their name. For example, the civil parishes of Lichfield and Chichester each hold city status, but Lichfield District and Chichester District in which they are situated do not.

As of 2022, there are currently five ceremonial counties which contain three cities – Cambridgeshire (Ely, Cambridge and Peterborough), Essex, Hampshire, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.

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Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2022—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with List, cities and United providing the first useful test.
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This entry incorporates text from “List of cities in the United Kingdom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.