San Antonio has spent years growing steadily while much of the national attention around Texas stayed focused on Austin, Dallas, or Houston.
Now, the city is approaching a milestone that says a lot about how much it has changed over the last decade: San Antonio is getting closer to overtaking Philadelphia as the sixth-largest city in the United States.
According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, Philadelphia’s population stood at roughly 1,574,281 residents as of July 2025, while San Antonio reached an estimated 1,548,422 residents. That leaves a gap of about 26,000 people between the two cities, a dramatic shift from 2020, when Philadelphia had roughly 162,000 more residents than San Antonio…