This paper proposes a new differential evolution (DE) algorithm for unconstrained continuous optimisation problems, termed \(μ \)JADE, that uses a small or ‘micro’ (\(μ \)) population. The main contribution of the proposed DE is a new mutation operator, ‘current-by-rand-to-pbest.’ With a population size less than 10, \(μ \)JADE is able to solve some classical multimodal benchmark problems of 30 and 100 dimensions as reliably as some state-of-the-art DE algorithms using conventionally sized populations. The algorithm also compares favourably to other small population DE variants and classical DE.