Nelson

Also known as Nelson City, Nelson, New Zealand

city on the South Island, New Zealand

OverviewAI-generated

Nelson is a city in New Zealand, located on the South Island within the Insular Oceania continent. It serves as the capital of the Nelson Region and was established in 1841. The city is named after Horatio Nelson and has the native label Whakatū, Nelson. With a population of 51,100, it covers an area of 445 and sits at an elevation of 0 above sea level.

The local dialing code is 03, and postal codes include 7010, 7011, and 7020. Nelson is in the UTC+12:00 time zone. It is twinned with Eureka, Miyazu. The city is described in sources such as The Nuttall Encyclopædia and the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition.

Synthesized by Vinony from 52 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Open Meteo, Openweathermap, OpenStreetMap, GeoNames, Vinony graph, Geo. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Weather now

cached 20h ago

16°few clouds

71% 1.9 m/s OpenWeatherMap

7-day forecast

via Open-Meteo

Place details

Locality: Nelson City
Region: Nelson
Country: New Zealand / Aotearoa
Population: 54,400
Timezone: Pacific/Auckland

via OpenStreetMap · GeoNames

Air quality

16US AQIGood

PM2.5: 1.8 µg/m³
PM10: 2.4 µg/m³

As of 2026-08-11 12:00 · Open-Meteo

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Nelson (Māori: Whakatū) is a city and unitary authority on the eastern shores of the Tasman Bay at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the oldest city in the South Island and the second-oldest settled city in the country; it was established in 1841 and became a city by British royal charter in 1858.

Nelson City is bordered to the west and south-west by the Tasman District and to the north-east, east and south-east by the Marlborough District. The Nelson urban area has a population of 50,800, making it New Zealand's 15th most populous urban area.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Nelson” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.