Hamilton, New Zealand

Hamilton is an inland city on the Waikato River in New Zealand's North Island, the regional seat and largest urban centre of the Waikato region. Its Maori name, Kirikiriroa, comes from the Maori settlements originally on the site, before European militia-settlers established the modern city as an agricultural service hub following the invasion of Waikato and the Crown land confiscations of the 1860s. It had a territorial population of 192,100 in June 2025, the country's fourth most populous municipality, and its economy has since diversified from farming into education, with about 40,000 tertiary students and 1,000 PhD-qualified scientists, research and tourism.