The 2023 Census of Pakistan was the detailed enumeration of the Pakistani population and the seventh national census in the country. It was conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. It was also the first ever digital census to be held in Pakistan, including the first in South Asian history.

The census was initially held from 1 March 2023 to 1 April 2023. However, enumeration was later extended several times until 30 May 2023, because of incomplete enumeration in large cities such as Karachi, Lahore, and Faisalabad, where people are more mobile and therefore harder to count, and in remote and rural Balochistan. The extension was also used by PBS officials and census takers for quality reviews, to check if all households and people were properly counted in each area. The 2023 census recorded a total population throughout the country of 241,499,431 (excluding Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir).

The Constitution of Pakistan requires that a population census be held every ten years. The results of censuses in Pakistan are used for resource allocation, sampling frames, constituency delimitation, apportionment, and for policy planning in the future.

After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, censuses were held in the years 1951, 1961, 1972 (delayed one year due to war in 1971), and 1981. However, the next censuses following were delayed until 1998 and 2017 due to politicization and instability. The 2017 census was the last census completed in the country, and recorded a total population of 213.2 million.

Most international organizations and demographers were projecting Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, to have a population between 17 million and 25 million prior to the census, but the results of the census showed Karachi's population at 14.9 million. Because of this, the results of the 2017 Census were controversial and were immediately contested by the Government of Sindh and many major Sindhi political parties, namely the Pakistan People's Party, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, and the Pak Sarzameen Party, all of which refused to accept the final results and requested a recount. They cited studies conducted by intergovernmental organizations such as UNICEF, national identity card statistics, and voter rolls to support their claim, as well as taking note of the issue that no post-enumeration survey was held after the 2017 census. The Chief Minister of Sindh Murad Ali Shah claimed that the population of Sindh stood at 61 million (compared to the enumerated count of 48 million).

Because of Sindhi opposition to the 2017 census results, the publication of the final results was held back for years by the Council of Common Interests (CCI), where Sindh repeatedly expressed its objections. Finally, in April 2021, the CCI pushed through and approved the final results of the 2017 census under the condition that Pakistan would hold another census before the ten-year deadline, and the results of that census would be used for the delineation of constituencies in the 2023 general election.

By February 2022, a timetable for the conduction of the census had been prepared based around the enumeration occurring in August 2022, but in early April, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics faced a major roadblock, as a delay occurred in the procurement of equipment for the exercise. This delayed the census date by several months from the original plan, as the pilot census and training could not occur in a timely manner.

While originally, the plan was shifted for the census to occur from 15 October to 15 November, another delay occurred, pushing the census to the last week of December, while the results of the census would be submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan by March 2023. Then, in early November a further postponement of three months occurred, as fieldwork was set to begin 1 February 2023 and to end 4 March 2023. This delay was largely attributable to the devastating floods that had ravaged the country that year.