Is being in an area of Arkansas that’s growing quickly a good thing or a bad thing?
Depends on who you ask.
Some want bigger, more exciting cities like Little Rock and Fayetteville, while others want peace and quiet like in Barling and Cherokee Village, thank you very much.
But today, we’re going to put opinions aside and look at the cold, hard facts — since 2010, which cities in Arkansas have grown the fastest.
After getting knee-deep in the Census’s American Community Survey using Saturday Night Science, we emerged with this set of cities in the Natural State that have people climbing over each other to get in.
315.2% growth since 2010 · 4,561 net new residents
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
163.7% growth since 2010 · 13,606 net new residents
Located in
Benton County, ArkansasCenterton is a city in Benton County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 9,515 at the 2010 census. Centerton is part of the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
148.5% growth since 2010 · 3,840 net new residents
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
85.1% growth since 2010 · 3,586 net new residents
Prairie Grove is a city in Washington County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 4,380 at the 2010 Census. It is part of the Northwest Arkansas region, and home to Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park. The park spans a large amount of land and contains a visitor center, museum, several monuments, a driving tour and a collection of period buildings and homes.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
83.7% growth since 2010 · 3,694 net new residents
Pea Ridge is a city in Benton County, Arkansas, United States. The name Pea Ridge comes from a combination of the physical location of the original settlement of the town, across the crest of an Ozark Mountains ridge, and for the hog peanuts or turkey peas that had been originally cultivated by Native American tribes centuries before European settlement, which later helped to provide basic subsistence once those pioneer settlers arrived.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
78.2% growth since 2010 · 25,564 net new residents
Located in
Benton County, ArkansasBentonville is the ninth-largest city in Arkansas and the county seat of Benton County. The city is centrally located in the county with Rogers adjacent to the east. The city is the headquarters of Walmart, which is the world’s largest retailer. Originally named Osage after the Osage Indians who hunted in the area when white settlers first moved to the area in 1837, the community was renamed to Bentonville in 1906 in honor of New York inventor Linn Boyd Benton, after being first incorporated on April 3, 1873. It is one of the four main cities in the four-county Northwest Arkansas Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is ranked 109th in terms of population in the United States with 463,204 in 2010 according to the United States Census Bureau. The city itself had a population of 35,301 at the 2010 Census, with an estimated population of 47,093 in 2016.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
71.5% growth since 2010 · 2,741 net new residents
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
57.8% growth since 2010 · 3,331 net new residents
Located in
Washington County, ArkansasFarmington is a city in Washington County, Arkansas. The community is nestled in a valley among the Boston Mountains, a subset of the Ozark Mountains. Although the first settlers came from the Deep South in 1828, the community did not incorporate until 1946. Located immediately west of Fayetteville in the Northwest Arkansas metropolitan statistical area, Farmington has been experiencing a population boom in recent years, as indicated by a 66% growth in population between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. It has been characterized as a bedroom community by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
55.0% growth since 2010 · 3,848 net new residents
Located in
Benton County, ArkansasLowell is a city in Benton County, Arkansas, in the United States. Located within the Ozarks, first settlement was along Old Wire Road in the 1840s, and although destroyed during the Civil War, the community was reestablished by J. H. McClure and thrived when the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway came through the area in the 1880s. Today, the city is a growing bedroom community within the rapidly growing Northwest Arkansas region. Lowell is also home to the headquarters of trucking company J.B. Hunt.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
38.4% growth since 2010 · 27,549 net new residents
Located in
Washington County, ArkansasFayetteville is the third-largest city in Arkansas and county seat of Washington County. The city is centrally located within the county and has been home of the University of Arkansas since the institution’s founding in 1871. Fayetteville is on the outskirts of the Boston Mountains, deep within the Ozarks. Known as Washington until 1829, the city was named after Fayetteville, Tennessee, from which many of the settlers had come. It was incorporated on November 3, 1836 and was rechartered in 1867. The four-county Northwest Arkansas Metropolitan Statistical Area is ranked 105th in terms of population in the United States with 463,204 in 2010 according to the United States Census Bureau. The city had a population of 73,580 at the 2010 Census. At 1,400 feet of elevation, it is also one of the highest major US cities between the western Great Plains and the Appalachian Mountains.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Arkansas’s statewide median.
On the map
Where Arkansas’s growth is happening
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How We Measured The Fastest Growing Cities In the Natural State for 2026
To figure out which cities are growing the most, we used Saturday Night Science to look at the growth rates for cities since the beginning of the decade, according to the American Community Survey put out by the census every year. Specifically:
- Current Population
- Population in 2010
- Growth rate from 2010 to Current (the latest available data, which came out in Dec 2024)
We ranked all 68 Arkansas cities with a population over 5,000 people from highest growth rate to lowest.
The city with the highest growth rate during this time was crowned the fastest-growing city in the Natural State.
And for those of you who are a little rusty with their statistics, you can calculate the growth rate by the following formula: [Current Population – Population 2010] / [Population 2010].
The data has been updated for 2026. This report is our eleventh time ranking the fastest growing cities in Arkansas.
The full plate
Fastest Growing Places In Arkansas For 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by city name.
| Rank | City | Population | Population 2010 | Growth | Absolute Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cave Springs | 6,008 | 1,447 | 315.2% | 4,561 |
| 2 | Centerton | 21,920 | 8,314 | 163.7% | 13,606 |
| 3 | Tontitown | 6,425 | 2,585 | 148.5% | 3,840 |
| 4 | Prairie Grove | 7,798 | 4,212 | 85.1% | 3,586 |
| 5 | Pea Ridge | 8,108 | 4,414 | 83.7% | 3,694 |
| 6 | Bentonville | 58,249 | 32,685 | 78.2% | 25,564 |
| 7 | Ward | 6,573 | 3,832 | 71.5% | 2,741 |
| 8 | Farmington | 9,094 | 5,763 | 57.8% | 3,331 |
| 9 | Lowell | 10,849 | 7,001 | 55.0% | 3,848 |
| 10 | Fayetteville | 99,319 | 71,770 | 38.4% | 27,549 |
| 11 | Rogers | 72,981 | 53,207 | 37.2% | 19,774 |
| 12 | Greenbrier | 6,018 | 4,405 | 36.6% | 1,613 |
| 13 | Bryant | 21,504 | 15,757 | 36.5% | 5,747 |
| 14 | Springdale | 88,160 | 66,461 | 32.6% | 21,699 |
| 15 | Siloam Springs | 18,699 | 14,370 | 30.1% | 4,329 |
| 16 | Benton | 36,595 | 29,118 | 25.7% | 7,477 |
| 17 | Beebe | 8,707 | 6,978 | 24.8% | 1,729 |
| 18 | Jonesboro | 80,137 | 64,798 | 23.7% | 15,339 |
| 19 | Maumelle | 19,373 | 15,918 | 21.7% | 3,455 |
| 20 | Cabot | 26,960 | 22,333 | 20.7% | 4,627 |
| 21 | Conway | 67,642 | 56,255 | 20.2% | 11,387 |
| 22 | Paragould | 30,215 | 25,422 | 18.9% | 4,793 |
| 23 | Marion | 13,623 | 11,693 | 16.5% | 1,930 |
| 24 | Sherwood | 33,070 | 28,690 | 15.3% | 4,380 |
| 25 | Pocahontas | 7,538 | 6,608 | 14.1% | 930 |
| 26 | Batesville | 11,445 | 10,045 | 13.9% | 1,400 |
| 27 | Alma | 5,906 | 5,245 | 12.6% | 661 |
| 28 | Greenwood | 9,616 | 8,634 | 11.4% | 982 |
| 29 | Walnut Ridge | 5,434 | 4,882 | 11.3% | 552 |
| 30 | Sheridan | 5,165 | 4,691 | 10.1% | 474 |
| 31 | Barling | 5,007 | 4,556 | 9.9% | 451 |
| 32 | Berryville | 5,707 | 5,206 | 9.6% | 501 |
| 33 | Van Buren | 23,763 | 22,236 | 6.9% | 1,527 |
| 34 | Russellville | 29,162 | 27,300 | 6.8% | 1,862 |
| 35 | Little Rock | 203,436 | 190,718 | 6.7% | 12,718 |
| 36 | Malvern | 10,953 | 10,273 | 6.6% | 680 |
| 37 | Hot Springs | 37,920 | 35,604 | 6.5% | 2,316 |
| 38 | Mountain Home | 13,108 | 12,345 | 6.2% | 763 |
| 39 | Clarksville | 9,526 | 9,005 | 5.8% | 521 |
| 40 | Searcy | 23,340 | 22,128 | 5.5% | 1,212 |
| 41 | Fort Smith | 89,805 | 85,200 | 5.4% | 4,605 |
| 42 | Morrilton | 7,080 | 6,723 | 5.3% | 357 |
| 43 | North Little Rock | 64,538 | 61,698 | 4.6% | 2,840 |
| 44 | Trumann | 7,410 | 7,172 | 3.3% | 238 |
| 45 | Harrison | 13,350 | 12,928 | 3.3% | 422 |
| 46 | Jacksonville | 29,221 | 28,498 | 2.5% | 723 |
| 47 | White Hall | 5,512 | 5,394 | 2.2% | 118 |
| 48 | Newport | 8,024 | 7,883 | 1.8% | 141 |
| 49 | Heber Springs | 7,161 | 7,076 | 1.2% | 85 |
| 50 | Cherokee Village | 5,046 | 5,074 | -0.6% | -28 |
| 51 | Texarkana | 29,177 | 29,787 | -2.0% | -610 |
| 52 | Mena | 5,582 | 5,768 | -3.2% | -186 |
| 53 | Wynne | 8,120 | 8,408 | -3.4% | -288 |
| 54 | De Queen | 6,058 | 6,409 | -5.5% | -351 |
| 55 | Arkadelphia | 10,099 | 10,697 | -5.6% | -598 |
| 56 | Magnolia | 10,894 | 11,648 | -6.5% | -754 |
| 57 | West Memphis | 23,929 | 26,391 | -9.3% | -2,462 |
| 58 | El Dorado | 17,115 | 19,278 | -11.2% | -2,163 |
| 59 | Warren | 5,353 | 6,064 | -11.7% | -711 |
| 60 | Monticello | 8,257 | 9,441 | -12.5% | -1,184 |
| 61 | Osceola | 6,688 | 7,857 | -14.9% | -1,169 |
| 62 | Hope | 8,671 | 10,204 | -15.0% | -1,533 |
| 63 | Camden | 10,307 | 12,246 | -15.8% | -1,939 |
| 64 | Stuttgart | 7,903 | 9,400 | -15.9% | -1,497 |
| 65 | Forrest City | 12,646 | 15,174 | -16.7% | -2,528 |
| 66 | Blytheville | 12,790 | 15,874 | -19.4% | -3,084 |
| 67 | Pine Bluff | 39,743 | 50,039 | -20.6% | -10,296 |
| 68 | Helena-West Helena | 8,935 | 12,650 | -29.4% | -3,715 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS, 2010-current. 68 Arkansas cities with more than 5,000 residents.
Summary
Summary: These Places Grew Up So Fast In Arkansas, You Know?
So there you have it, the fastest growing cities in Arkansas are led by Cave Springs which has been growing at a blistering pace this decade relative to other cities and towns around the state.
The fastest-growing cities in Arkansas are Cave Springs, Centerton, Tontitown, Prairie Grove, Pea Ridge, Bentonville, Ward, Farmington, Lowell, and Fayetteville.
It’ll be interesting to see if these places can keep growing at the same rate over the next couple of years. We’ll be here to let you know!
