Florida 2050 Urbanization Outlook

The Florida Demographic Estimating Conference projects 28,096,408 residents on April 1, 2050, in the forecast it adopted on June 22, 2026 (EDR conference tables).

The same packet lists 23,379,261 residents for April 1, 2025, the last year before the line the Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research (EDR) marks as "Begins forecast" (EDR). It is a projection, not a count, and it has already moved: the December 2025 conference put Florida's 2050 population at 28,250,130, against 28,096,408 in the June 2026 forecast (EDR conference tables). The executive summary explains the cut as a lower April 2026 estimate for net domestic migration, which the conference assumed will persist and feed through every remaining forecast year (Demographic Estimating Conference summary).

Figures in the table are from the conference packet (EDR conference tables); from 2035 on, the packet reports five-year averages rather than single years, so its 2035 growth rate of 0.90 percent is not the same measure as the single-year 0.79 percent the executive summary gives for 2035 (EDR summary).

Florida's growth is forecast to keep slowing, from an average of 0.90 percent a year in the five years to 2035 to 0.40 percent a year from 2045 to 2050 (EDR conference tables).

In people, the packet's five-year average yearly gain is 227,184 for the 2030 to 2035 period and 111,878 for the 2045 to 2050 period (EDR). EDR's executive summary calls the slowing a pattern the conference has long expected and names the end of this decade as an inflection point, when the final baby boomer cohorts enter retirement (Demographic Estimating Conference). It also notes that Florida's year over year growth first drops below 1.00 percent in 2032.

Migration carries the long-range forecast. Deaths have exceeded births in Florida every year since the 2020-21 fiscal year, so all of the state's growth comes from net migration, and the June 2026 conference left its Florida net international migration forecast unchanged while lowering net domestic migration (EDR summary). Because that revision lowered every forecast year, a 2050 Florida figure needs its conference date beside it.

The conference forecasts 11,607,705 Florida households on April 1, 2050, up from an estimated 9,292,338 in 2025 (EDR conference tables).

Household growth slows on the same curve as population. The average yearly increase drops from 111,878 households in the 2030 to 2035 period to 57,307 in the 2045 to 2050 period, when households grow 0.50 percent a year against 0.40 percent for population (EDR).

The December 2025 conference had 11,671,213 households for 2050, against 11,607,705 in the June 2026 forecast (EDR conference tables). The packet also carries quarterly Florida forecast tables, including household size.

EDR's 2025 dense urban land area report lists eight Florida counties under the county density test, criterion B, by a count of its rows: Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Lee, Miami-Dade, Orange, Pinellas and Seminole (EDR dense urban land area report).

EDR prepared the report on June 24, 2026. Dense urban land areas are defined in s. 380.0651(3)(a), Florida Statutes, and proposed development meeting the tests is exempt from the requirements of s. 380.06, the state's development of regional impact review, with the 1,000-per-square-mile and 1 million county tests also requiring the development to sit in an adopted urban service area (s. 380.0651, F.S.). The statute sets four tests: a municipality averaging at least 1,000 people per square mile with at least 5,000 residents; a county averaging at least 1,000 people per square mile; a county of at least 900,000 people at that density without a designated urban service area; and a county of at least 1 million people. EDR must calculate the criteria every year from decennial census land area and the latest state population estimates and send the list to the state land planning agency by July 1, which must post it within 7 days. A county that meets the criteria stays on the list.

In the report's county columns, Palm Beach County appears only under criterion D, the 1 million people test, while Lee and Seminole appear only under criterion B and Pinellas under criteria B and C (EDR). The report lists no county added under criteria B, C or D in 2025, and it counts only municipalities incorporated as of April 1, 2025.

Statewide water use in Florida is projected to rise by about 754.53 million gallons per day, or approximately 11.36 percent, between 2025 and 2045, based on water management district data compiled in EDR's 2025 annual assessment of water resources (EDR water resources assessment).

The district projections compiled in the assessment run from 2025 to 2045 in 5-year intervals; the FDACS agricultural irrigation estimates in the next section run to 2050. EDR attributes roughly two-thirds of the projected increase, 521.81 million gallons per day, falls in four planning regions the assessment abbreviates as NFRWSP, CFWI, SF-LEC and SF-LWC (EDR). Only one Florida planning region, SF-UEC, expects to use less water by 2045, largely because agricultural irrigation is expected to decline there.

The projections also shift from year to year: the districts' statewide total for 2040 was 7,249.00 million gallons per day in the prior assessment and 7,218.72 in the current one, a reduction EDR ties to new projections for the NW-Oth and CFWI regions (EDR water resources assessment).

FDACS projects that statewide irrigated crop acreage will fall by approximately 62,000 acres, about 4 percent, through 2050, and that average-year agricultural irrigation demand will drop to 1,625 million gallons per day from 1,675 in 2024 (FDACS FSAID 13 report).

The June 2026 report, which describes itself as the eighth annual update of FSAID water use estimates prepared by FDACS, counts 7,269,956 acres of agricultural lands and 1,534,799 acres of irrigated cropland in Florida in its 2024 baseline (FSAID 13). The projected decline is based on county-specific trends in irrigated area from 2015 to 2024, the most recent years of FSAID's annual irrigated lands refinements.

These farm figures feed directly into Florida water planning. FDACS compiles 20-year demand projections for agricultural self-suppliers and gives them to each water management district in five-year increments, and section 373.709, Florida Statutes, requires the districts to consider the data and explain any adjustment or deviation (FDACS agricultural water supply planning). The FSAID geodatabase behind the report is public and can be queried by crop, county, planning area and district. Last verified: October 18, 2026, with the June 22, 2026 Demographic Estimating Conference packet and executive summary, the EDR dense urban land area list prepared June 24, 2026, chapter 3 of the 2025 water resources assessment, the text of s. 380.0651 and the FDACS FSAID 13 report re-read line by line.