Burnsville is a city 15 miles (24 km) south of downtown Minneapolis in Dakota County, Minnesota. The city is situated on a bluff overlooking the south bank of the Minnesota River, upstream from its confluence with the Mississippi River. Burnsville and nearby suburbs form the southern portion of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with about 3.7 million residents. At the 2020 census the population was 64,317.