In brief
The largest documented number lives in Russia: 226,271 people in the 2021 census.
Official figures exist for 2 countries; together they add up to 227,959. This is not an estimate of the world total: the censuses were held in different years (2021-2021) and define belonging differently, and countries without such data are not counted.
In Russia's 2020 census (reference date 1 October 2021), 226,271 people identified with the nationality "Карачаевцы" (Karachays)1. That is 0.17% of the 130,587,364 residents who stated a nationality.
Rosstat also assigns 4 other self-designations to this nationality (listed in Russian in the source table).
Main language: Karachay-Balkar. Glottolog classifies it in the Turkic family.
Where they live: census figures
Each figure comes from the country's official census. Censuses define belonging differently (self-identification, citizenship, mother tongue, ancestry); the type is given on each row.
In detail: Russia, 2021 census
Where: the 10 regions with the largest numbers
Source [1]: Rosstat, 2020 census, vol. 5, table 1
Languages and their lineage
Karachay-Balkar
- Turkicturk1311
- Common Turkiccomm1245
- Kipchak-Turkestankipc1240
- Kipchakkipc1239
- Northwest Kipchaknort3424
- West Kipchakwest1472
- Kaukasus Kipchakkauk1241
- Karachay-Balkarkara1465
People-to-language links: Wikidata (properties P103 and P2936), checked against ISO 639-3 codes. Language classification: Glottolog 5.3.
Sources
- Rosstat. National composition of the population of the Russian Federation. Results of the 2020 All-Russian Population Census (reference date 1 October 2021), vol. 5, table 1. Tom5_tab1_VPN-2020.xlsx (archived copy)
- United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). Demographic Yearbook, table 26: Population by national and/or ethnic group. Kazakhstan, Census - de facto - complete tabulation, Final figure, complete. https://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=POP&f=tableCode%3a26%3bsexCode%3a0%3bareaCode%3a0%3bcountr…
- Hammarström H., Forkel R., Haspelmath M., Bank S. (2026). Glottolog 5.3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. glottolog.org (CC BY 4.0)