With just under 31,000 residents as recently as the year 2000, the city of Surprise, Arizona, located 40 miles to the northwest of Phoenix, is now number one in Arizona population growth.
According to just-released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the southern Arizona hotspot has seen its population increase to 179,000 residents during the first year of the Covid 19 outbreak, and then increase even more to just under 125,400 in 2025.
Those figures, notes the Arizona Republic, means that Surprise has seen an increase of more than 7,700 people in just one 12-month period “between 2024 and 2025 alone.”
According to a publication put out by the City of Surprise Economic Development Department, the city’s population is expected to top 180,000 this year, on the way to around 300,000 in the next decade.
In looking at the latest Census figures, the Surprise Independent last week remarked: “Growth has largely stalled across some of the state’s largest cities. But the same cannot be said about Surprise.”
What amounts to a current 4.6% annual growth rate for Surprise appears particularly impressive when compared with the latest figures for Phoenix, with a 0.2% rate of growth, and Tucson, recording an actual decline of around 0.8%.
While the numbers for Surprise are giving the city’s leaders much to boast about, they fit in with a larger regional pattern, according to the Census, showing that of the 15 cities with the largest numeric increases between 2024 and 2025, nine were in the West.
May 26, 2026
By Garry Boulard
