Medan was the capital of the State of East Sumatra before it became the provincial capital of North Sumatra.

The rapid development of Medan came with the Deli Railway, which was established for shipping tobacco, rubber, tea, timber, palm oil, and sugar from Medan to the Port of Belawan, then exported around the world. The city was well known due to the importance of tobacco as an export to Europe and the West. They set up tobacco plantations, transforming Medan into a trade hub within several years and earning Medan the nickname Het Land Dollar, meaning 'the land of the money'. In the late 19th century, colonial Dutch seeking new plantation areas chose Medan and Deli as the most recent plantation hubs with Deli Company. It later became a part of the Deli Sultanate, established in 1632. The city was founded by Guru Patimpus, a Karonese man who named the area of swampy land at the confluence of Deli River and Babura river Kampung Medan Putri.

Both are connected to the city centre via toll roads and railways. A gateway to the western part of Indonesia, Medan is supported by the Port of Belawan and Kualanamu International Airport. Medan is a multicultural metropolis and a busy trading city bordered by the Strait of Malacca, making it one of the major economic cities in Indonesia.

The Medan metropolitan area-which includes neighbouring Binjai, Deli Serdang Regency, and a part of Karo Regency-is the largest metropolitan area outside of Java, with 4,744,323 residents counted in the 2020 Census. As of the 2020 Census, Medan has a population of 2,435,252 within its city limits, the official estimate as at mid 2022 was 2,494,512 and it had over 3.4 million in its built-up urban area, making it the fourth largest urban area in Indonesia. According to the National Development Planning Agency, Medan is one of the four main central cities in Indonesia, alongside Jakarta, Surabaya, and Makassar. Medan ( Indonesian pronunciation: ( listen) English: / m ə d ɑː n/) is the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of North Sumatra, as well as a regional hub and financial centre of Sumatra.

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