1,206-CITY ATLASSOURCE-BACKED CITY REFERENCE
Afghanistan
Compare this sourced profile of Kandahar, Afghanistan before planning. Stable fields identify the place; confirm current transport, access and opening details with official sources.
01What the data says — and does not say
This page separates the checked GeoNames row for Kandahar—523,300, Asia/Kabul, and source coordinates—from live travel claims. Those fields identify and compare the record; they do not prove current transport, accessibility, census totals, or a City Atlas Club visit.
Wikidata's localized description: city in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.
02This city's dataset fingerprint
The source row behind Kandahar is GeoNames ID 1138336. Its recorded administrative path is Kandahar District → Kandahar → Afghanistan, and GeoNames classifies the place as a first-order administrative seat. Kandahār occurs once as a primary city label in this atlas sample; the numeric ID remains the durable source key if names change. The city row itself was updated 2026-04-13; that date belongs to the source record, not to every transport or visitor detail in the real destination.
Within the fixed 1,206-record atlas, Kandahar ranks 1,082 by recorded population. Inside the 4 selected Afghanistan entries it ranks 3; inside the 632 entries in its broad region it ranks 570. Its 523,300 population value is 0.95 times the 548,800 median for the country cohort and 0.52 times the 1,008,426 regional median. Kandahar is rank 3 among the 4 selected Afghanistan entries, so a percentage band would overstate this small cohort. Kandahar's recorded value stays within one quarter of the country-cohort median used here. These comparisons describe this selected dataset only; they are not current census rankings or official urban-area boundaries.
Kandahar's three nearest other atlas coordinates are Quetta at 201.079 km with 1,565,546 recorded people; Herat at 446.811 km with 574,300 recorded people; Kabul at 457.238 km with 4,434,550 recorded people. The closest-to-farthest distance spread is 256.159 km. Compared with Quetta, Kandahar's recorded population is 0.33 times as large. Against Kandahar, Quetta follows Quetta District → Balochistan → Pakistan in the source. Its point has lower latitude and higher longitude; it belongs to the selected Pakistan cohort rather than Afghanistan, uses Asia/Karachi instead of Asia/Kabul, and carries the same first-order administrative seat class. Its recorded population is above Kandahar's. Against Kandahar, Herat follows Herat District → Herat → Afghanistan in the source. Its point has higher latitude and lower longitude; it belongs to the same selected Afghanistan cohort, uses the shared Asia/Kabul identifier, and carries the same first-order administrative seat class. Its recorded population is above Kandahar's. Against Kandahar, Kabul follows Kabul → Afghanistan in the source. Its point has higher latitude and higher longitude; it belongs to the same selected Afghanistan cohort, uses the shared Asia/Kabul identifier, and carries capital of a political entity rather than first-order administrative seat. Its recorded population is above Kandahar's. Its nearest-neighbor distance ranks 995 of 1,206 from shortest to longest in the same snapshot. Kandahar's nearest-coordinate gap belongs to the wider half of atlas distances. This pattern can reveal whether other catalog references are geographically close, but it cannot establish whether a border crossing is possible or practical, or whether rail, road, fare, or journey-time connections exist. Read as one record signature, GeoNames 1138336, the coordinate pair 31.6133 / 65.7101, country rank 3 of 4, and neighbor GeoNames 1167528 at 201.079 km bind Kandahar to a reproducible comparison. That combined key distinguishes the row; it is not a recommendation or evidence of a physical connection.
Kandahar's reference point is 31.6133° north and 65.7101° east. The IANA identifier Asia/Kabul is shared by 4 city rows in this catalog, while the GeoNames class PPLA is shared by 429 rows. Kandahar's row carries both second- and first-order administrative labels. Kandahar's point falls in the middle-latitude coordinate band used by this atlas's row checks. Kandahar's time-zone field defines the narrower catalog cohort; its place class is shared more broadly. GeoNames supplies no elevation for Kandahar, so the profile preserves that missing value instead of guessing terrain. Together these fields form a reproducible identity check for this page, not a claim about walkability, climate or accessibility.
03Nearby atlas references
Kandahar's closest other entries in this atlas are Quetta (201.079 km), Herat (446.811 km), Kabul (457.238 km).
04Verify before you book
Before visiting Kandahar, confirm changing decisions with current first-party sources:
Read how City Atlas Club verifies changing travel facts →05Sources and freshness
GeoNames updated the row 2026-04-13; the atlas checked the dataset 2026-08-04. Available Wikidata fields were verified in the same run.
GeoNames data: CC BY 4.0. Wikidata labels and descriptions: CC0 1.0.