Urban districts of Saxony

Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon: Dräsdn; , ) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth largest by area (after Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne), and the third-most populous city in the area of former East Germany, after Berlin and Leipzig. Dresden's urban area comprises the towns of Freital, Pirna, Radebeul, Meissen, Coswig, Radeberg, and Heidenau and has around 790,000 inhabitants. The Dresden metropolitan area has over 1.3 million inhabitants.

Leipzig is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 633,592 residents as of 31 December 2025. It is the eighth-largest city in Germany and is part of the Central German Metropolitan Region. Leipzig is located about southwest of Berlin, in the southernmost part of the North German Plain (the Leipzig Bay), at the confluence of the White Elster and its tributaries Pleiße and Parthe.

Chemnitz (; from 1953 to 1990: Karl-Marx-Stadt () is the third-largest city in the German state of Saxony after Leipzig and Dresden, and the fourth-largest city in the area of the former East Germany after (East) Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden.