Espoo is the second largest city and municipality in Finland. It is part of the Finnish Capital Region, along with the cities of Helsinki, Vantaa, and Kauniainen. Most of its population lives in the inner urban core of the Helsinki metropolitan area. Espoo shares its eastern border with Helsinki and Vantaa; and it surrounds the enclaved city of Kauniainen. Other bordering municipalities of Espoo are Nurmijärvi and Vihti in the north, and Kirkkonummi in the west. The city is located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, in the region of Uusimaa, and has a population of 292,913.

Espoo's northern and western parts of the city area are more rural than urban. The national park of Nuuksio is situated in northwestern Espoo.

Espoo does not have a traditional city center, having instead several local regional centers. Espoo is thus divided into seven major areas.

Aalto University is based in Otaniemi, Espoo, along with a thriving science community that includes numerous startups and organizations such as VTT - the Technical Research Center of Finland. Several major companies are based in Espoo, including Nokia, HMD Global, Tieto, KONE, Neste, Fortum, Orion Corporation, Outokumpu, and Foreca, as well as video game developers Rovio and Remedy Entertainment.

The city of Espoo is officially bilingual. The majority of the population, 75.1%, speaks Finnish as their mother tongue and 6.9% speaks Swedish. 18% of Espoo's population has a first language other than Finnish or Swedish.