It's a New York thing to refer to the rural Northern and Western parts of New York State that are not New York City. No one (or at least very very few) outside of New York State uses it to refer to any other place.

this really only applies to New York, as New York City is in the bottom little bit of the state’s southern nubbin and the rest of the state is commonly called “Upstate New York” since when people outside the northeast refer to New York, they’re talking about New York City, rather than the state of New York. thus Upstate New York was shortened to Upstate. (it seems to hold that most people i know who grew up in the northeast call New York City “NYC” rather than what i used growing up which was “New York.”

I am an american, I grew up in a state in the south west, no one ever used the term “going upstate” for anything because there was no such place to go.

I guarantee you only see dialog such as this in media set in NYC.

Like others are saying, it is a new york thing. But in general, upstate means further from the city than where the speaker lives. Until you crouse some imaginary line, then downstate means closer to the city. Comonly, but not always, it is used in a derogatory sense. They city people think the upstaters are rural hicks. And the upstaters think the city people couldn't survive outside a city. Source, I grew up in an area that didn't consider itself upstate, but all the city people sure did.

It works just like updog

A lot of people are saying it's primarily a NY thing, so I'd just chime in to say we use it in PA as well, at least in the Philly area, to refer to the northern parts of the state.

Not much more to it than youre going far enough north to be out of your city's metro area, but staying in the same state. In PA I'd say upstate probably starts around the Poconos. I think new Yorkers kind of tend to use it to refer to the rest of the state, we wouldn't tend to do that here, Central and Western PA are different things than Upstate PA, although there is definitely some overlap and there's not exactly clearly defined borders.

I don't know how many other states use the same terminology, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's pretty common in other largish states with larger population densities in the southern part of the state and lower densities in the north (I don't know off the top of my head which other states that would apply to, maybe it's only PA and NY)

I live in Southern California and we don’t really use that phrase around here. I think it’s almost entirely used to refer to basically any area of New York north of NYC.

Since a lot of people have upstate, there are some places that have a downstate in the southern part of the state, the best examples I can think of being Illinois and Maine.

It just happens to be that you've heard upstate more because New York City is a lot more depicted in American media.

A place where people use the phrase steamed hams.

I guess you might be hearing it movies set in New York City, which is in the southern tip of the state of New York. All the other notable cities, the Catskill mountains, Niagara Falls, and other attractions are all further north, or upstate. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if the expression got picked up by a wider crowd to mean “north”.

In Illinois you might hear "downstate" to refer to anything south of Champaign-Urbana

It's common in states that have a lower population center, geographically. I'm in Minnesota, and our Twin Cities are in the southern third of the state.

"Going up north (to the cabin)" is our spin on "upstate", because (for most people) there isn't much of a reason to go much more north than we already do.

It means the Northern part of the state, typically when the state has a North-South cultural divide. It's not exclusive to the US though, I've seen it used in places like Sao Paulo and Lagos before. Anywhere where one locality serves as a drain on the rest will get people to refer to different halves of the place, I guess nobody learned from Athens and Sparta.

Upstate is used in South Carolina as well, used to refer to the western and more mountainous part of the state. The eastern non-mountainous part of the state is called low-country.

Def depends where you’re at. In Virginia we call upstate Nova (northern VA). In NJ it’s North Jersey (I’m originally from South Jersey) PA is more east west oriented since Philly and Pittsburgh are east and west ends of the state.

upstate: situated or occurring in the northern part of a state, especially the northern part of New York State as contrasted with New York City. "upstate New York"

It's a New York thing. That state loosely divides into two regions: New York City to the south, and everything else to the north ("upstate"). I have heard people refer to the New York City area as "downstate" but that term is less common.

Similarly, Manhattan is loosely split into its northern portion (uptown), middle portion (midtown), and southern portion (downtown).

In Michigan, there is "downstate" it means heading to the southern part of the state.

it's very common in the greater NYC area to refer to the rest of the state, esp. the more rural parts (even if a lot of the state does not consider itself "upstate").

I'm probably wrong, but I think it means somewhere north of the capital city, and maybe it's only used in New York

It refers to the northern part of whatever state the speaker happens to be in. It's mostly used by New Yorkers to refer to the more rural part of New York State which is North of New York City.

Downstate is a thing, I guess, but neither upstate nor downstate are used much outside of New York in my experience.

My understanding is that it means going, loosely, to the opposite side of the state of the major metropolitan area in that state. Upstate NY is the northwest part, upstate MA is the west part, upstate PA is the northeast part. I'm looking around, and it seems to also 1) only be used on a few states, 2) usually is on the north half (but not always), and 3) is somewhat interchangable with "rural".

Outside main city? For NY it's any area outside New York City. Like Albany or Rochester.

Yes, the northern part of the state. Typically its also far away from major cities into a more rural area.

Echoing a lot of the people here, I've personally only heard it used in New York state