KCOkurds.globalKCOUnited States

Stylised relief, not survey data

KCO · North America

Kurds in United States

Nashville’s ‘Little Kurdistan’ grew from refugee resettlement in 1976, 1991 to 1992 and 1996 to 1997, after the Iraqi Kurdish exoduses. Kurds also live in San Diego, Dallas and Washington DC. The Kurdish Heritage Foundation of America worked in Brooklyn from 1981 to 2011.

JoinCities

  • about 25,000 (census, secondary) to 50,000 (Institut kurde de Paris)

    mixed, 2020

    Wikipedia: Kurdish Americans; IKP To verify

  • 15,000 to 20,000

    community estimate, Nashville, 2023

    WPLN, 2025 Secondary source

At a glance

01The programme

This programme brings together Kurds living in United States, city by city. Its charter form is a Diaspora Chapter, fitted to local law and to the risks members face.

Forming Diaspora Chapter: not yet chartered.

02Cities

The map needs JavaScript. The places it shows are listed beside it.

Layers

Places on this map (4)

Map: OpenFreeMap, OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Boundaries: Natural Earth. Places: the platform’s own pages.

  • California

    San Diego

    Refugees and families

  • DC, Maryland, Virginia

    Washington DC area

    Advocacy and professional communities

  • Tennessee

    Nashville

    ‘Little Kurdistan’: refugees resettled since 1976 and in the 1990s

  • Texas

    Dallas

    Refugees and professionals

Subdivisions of United States

Each first-level subdivision has a local page. It gathers official services, learning, safety and civic life.

The list follows UN sources first: OCHA COD-AB, then UN SALB, then ISO 3166-2. It takes no position on any status or boundary.

Listed separately in UN M49
  • US-AS American Samoa: M49 016, American Samoa
  • US-GU Guam: M49 316, Guam
  • US-MP Northern Mariana Islands: M49 580, Northern Mariana Islands
  • US-PR Puerto Rico: M49 630, Puerto Rico
  • US-UM United States Minor Outlying Islands: M49 581, United States Minor Outlying Islands
  • US-VI Virgin Islands, U.S.: M49 850, United States Virgin Islands

Subdivisions in the profile

03How statistics see the community

The American Community Survey asks about ancestry and the language spoken at home. Its figures have not yet been pulled.

Counts of Kurds differ by what they measure: birthplace, citizenship, language or self-identification. Each figure names its measure, year and source, and none are summed.

The United States profile

04Areas

  • Academy

    Every field of knowledge, courses in all Kurdish varieties, and communities of practice.

  • Heritage

    History from the Zagros to today, memory, faiths, arts, literature and food.

  • Language

    Kurmanji, Sorani, Zazaki, Southern Kurdish and Gorani, in every script.

  • Research

    Kurdish studies: the observatory, reading lists and new research.

  • Opportunities

    Livelihoods, skills, jobs, mentoring and diaspora-to-region bridges.

  • Civic

    Civic education, rights literacy, statelessness help and dialogue.

  • Development

    Social programmes, livelihoods and disaster preparedness for Kurdish communities.

  • News and events

    Kurdish and regional news with every outlet labelled, and the calendar of Kurdish days.

05Learn in the Academy

Courses and disciplines of the Academy on the subject of this page.

Courses

Disciplines

A completion record shows what was studied and assessed. It is not a certificate or a qualification.

All disciplines