Wheeling is a city in Ohio and Marshall counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The county seat of Ohio County, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains within the state's Northern Panhandle. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 27,062, making it the fifth-most populous city in West Virginia and the most populous in the Northern Panhandle. The Wheeling metropolitan area had a population of 139,513 in 2020.