Neutron stars are known to contain extremely powerful magnetic fields. Their effect is to deform the shape of the star, leading to the potential emission of continuous gravitational waves. The magnetic deformation of neutron stars, however, depends on the geometry and strength of their internal magnetic field as well as on their composition, described by the equation of state. Unfortunately, both the configuration of the magnetic field and the equation of state of neutron stars are unknown, and assessing the detectability of continuous gravitational waves from neutron stars suffers from these uncertainties. Using our recent results relating the magnetic deformation of a neutron star to its mass and radius—based on models with realistic equations of state currently allowed by observational and nuclear physics constraints—and considering the Galactic pulsar population, we assess the detectability of continuous gravitational waves from pulsars in the galaxy by current and future gravitational waves detectors.