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Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area, and the fifth-largest city in Washington. It has variously been characterized as a satellite city, a suburb, a boomburb, or an edge city. The population was 151,854 at the 2020 census. The city's name is derived from the French term ("beautiful view"). In a 2018 estimate, the city's median household income was among the top five cities in the state of Washington.
In 2008, Bellevue was number one in CNNMoney's list of the best places to live and launch a business, and in 2010 was again ranked as the fourth-best place to live in America. In 2014, Bellevue was ranked as the second-best place to live by USA Today.
More than 145 companies have been located in Bellevue; companies currently headquartered there include PACCAR Inc, T-Mobile US, and Valve. The technology company Amazon was founded in Bellevue by Jeff Bezos.
History
The Duwamish, whose main settlements were located in present-day Renton and Seattle, maintained a small outpost settlement called Satskal (SAH-tsah-kahl) along the Mercer Slough, south of present-day downtown Bellevue. It was from this village that an attack on the settlers of Elliott Bay was staged. The Duwamish also had a village near Factoria called 'pah-pah-DEEL'.
Bellevue was first settled by European Americans in 1869 by William Meydenbauer and Aaron Mercer, who claimed homestead tracts several miles apart. Both moved away within a few years, and permanent residents did not arrive until 1879. By 1882, a community, consisting mostly of logging homesteaders, had established itself.
By the early part of the 20th century, Bellevue had acquired a reputation as a weekend getaway destination for Seattle residents, who would arrive by ferry at Meydenbauer Bay and spend the day at nearby Wildwood Park. After the ferry landing was moved to Medina, however, tourism to Bellevue waned. To counter this decline, the Bellevue Strawberry Festival was conceived of in 1925, and by the 1930s it had grown to attract as many as 15,000 visitors. At the time, Bellevue was still a small town with around 2,000 residents.
Prior to the opening of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge in 1940, Bellevue was mostly rural farmland area with little development. Although it was small, developers were pushing to change that; in the 1920s, James S. Ditty predicted that it would become a city with a population of 200,000. He envisioned plans that included the bridging of Lake Washington and an area filled with golf courses and airports. Once the Murrow Memorial Bridge opened, access from Seattle improved, and the area began to evolve into a bedroom community.
In 1942, the Bellevue Strawberry Festival was cancelled. The primary reason was that some 90 percent of the agricultural workforce in the area was of Japanese ancestry, and all of these farmers and their families had been forcibly interned in camps following the start of World War II. The fair would not be revived for another 45 years. Following the expulsion of the ethnic Japanese farming community, a large quantity of farmland became available for development. This made way for the initial development of the Bellevue downtown area.
Bellevue incorporated as a third-class city on the March 31, 1953. Following the 1963 opening of a second bridge across the lake, the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, the city began to grow more rapidly. The Crossroads community was annexed in 1964. Lake Hills was annexed in 1969. By the 1970 census, Bellevue had become the fourth most populous city in the state of Washington, behind only Seattle, Spokane, and Tacoma.
Bellevue remains one of the largest cities in the state, with several high-rise structures in its core and a burgeoning business community. The city experienced a building boom during the mid-2000s, with the building of developments such as Lincoln Square and the Bravern. The plan is similar to the redevelopment of the downtown core with superblocks of mixed-use projects from private developers. These include the Spring District, a mixed-use residential and commercial neighborhood which was developed on of industrial land around a future light rail station. The 2 Line of Link light rail was opened from South Bellevue station to Redmond Technology station in April 2024 and an extension to Downtown Redmond opened in May 2025. The line was extended to Seattle in March 2026 over Lake Washington.
Geography
Bellevue lies between Lake Washington to the west and the smaller Lake Sammamish to the east. Much of Bellevue is drained by the Kelsey Creek watershed, whose source is located in the Larsen Lake and Phantom Lake green belt and whose outlet is near where Interstate 90 meets Lake Washington's eastern shore. The city is bisected by Interstate 405 running north–south, and the southern portion is crossed from west to east by Interstate 90. The State Route 520 freeway roughly delineates the upper reaches of Bellevue.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.
Climate
Like much of the Puget Sound lowland, Bellevue has a mild oceanic climate (Cfb). It also has frequent rain showers from October to May, with precipitation levels typically being over . On average, the hottest month is July, while January is the coldest. The wet season of 2017, defined as the period from October through April, saw a similar rainfall of .
Economy
Bellevue is an economic hub of the Seattle region's Eastside and home to the headquarters of various sizes of companies, including the U.S. operations for many international firms. Since 2005, the city has become a hub for software engineering and other technology development centers. These include PACCAR Inc, T-Mobile US, Eddie Bauer, SAP Concur, and Symetra. Bellevue hosts a number of satellite offices for large technology companies such as eBay, Meta, ByteDance, Oracle, Salesforce, Google, and Microsoft; Microsoft was at one point headquartered in Bellevue but has since moved to the neighboring community of Redmond, Washington. Celebrated video game companies Valve, Bungie, Sucker Punch Productions, and The Pokémon Company International are also based here.
In 2019, Amazon and Facebook announced plans to open large engineering centers in Bellevue with plans to add several thousand employees. In 2018, Google also opened a major engineering facility in downtown Bellevue. , there are several high-rise office buildings in Downtown Bellevue that are under construction or in active planning and design phases, including Bellevue 600, part of a major Amazon campus. Several high-rise residential buildings are also planned in downtown, spurred in part by future light rail service, on former retail and low-rise commercial lots. , Amazon has 12,000 employees in Bellevue and has reduced its workforce in Seattle.
By the late 2010s, Microsoft had become the largest employer in Bellevue, where it had several offices to supplement its headquarters campus in Redmond. The company's workforce in the city peaked at 9,300 in 2021 and later declined as it consolidated offices at its headquarters and vacated its leased offices pace in Downtown Bellevue and Eastgate. Other technology companies, including ByteDance and The Pokémon Company International, have since expanded their office leases in Downtown Bellevue. From 2021 to 2025, approximately of office space was added in Bellevue to accommodate the growing demand that had shifted from Seattle. One of the major factors is the Seattle head tax, which charges employers based on their number of employees.
Top employers
According to the city's 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the largest employers in the city are:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! #
! Employer
! Type of Business
! # of Employees
! Percentage
|-
| 1
| Amazon
| Online retail
| 14,300
| 8.68%
|-
| 2
| T-Mobile
| Cellular telephone
| 7,800
| 4.74%
|-
| 3
| Meta
| Online social network
| 5,400
| 3.28%
|-
| 4
| Overlake Hospital Medical Center
| Medical Hospital
| 3,800
| 2.31%
|-
| 5
| Bellevue School District
| Education K–12
| 2,900
| 1.76%
|-
| 6
| City of Bellevue
| Government
| 1,800
| 1.09%
|-
|7
|TikTok
|Online social network
|1,700
|1.03%
|-
| 8
| Salesforce
| Business Services
| 1,500
| 0.91%
|-
| 9
| Bellevue College
| Higher education
| 1,100
| 0.67%
|-
| 10
| Pokémon
| Video game developer
| 1,000
| 0.61%
|-
|—
|Total employers
|—
|41,300
|25.08%
|}
The city has numerous thriving commercial districts, with four major shopping centers: Bellevue Square in the downtown area, Factoria Mall to the south, Crossroads Mall to the east, and the Overlake Shopping District in the north.