San Jose, officially the City of San José, is the largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2022 population of 971,233, it is the most populous city in both the Bay Area and the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland Combined Statistical Area—which in 2022 had a population of 7.5 million and 9.0 million respectively—the third-most populous city in California after Los Angeles and San Diego, and the 12th-most populous in the United States. Located in the center of the Santa Clara Valley on the southern shore of San Francisco Bay, San Jose covers an area of 179.97 sq mi (466.1 km2). San Jose is the county seat of Santa Clara County and the main component of the San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara Metropolitan Statistical Area, with an estimated population of around two million residents in 2018.

Northern California is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's 58 counties. Its main population centers include the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Sacramento area, the Redding, California, area south of the Cascade Range, and the Metropolitan Fresno area. Northern California also contains redwood forests, along with most of the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite Valley and part of Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta, and most of the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions.