Philippines Map with Provinces

The Philippines has 82 provinces, grouped into 18 administrative regions and distributed across the island groups of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The map on this page draws 79 of them, plus Metro Manila as a single shape; Dinagat Islands, Davao Occidental and the two provinces of the 2022 Maguindanao division are shown inside their parent provinces rather than as separate shapes. Provinces are the country's main local government tier below the regional level, each with an elected governor, a provincial board and a provincial capital. Under them sit cities, municipalities and barangays, and the barangay count alone runs past 42,000.

This map shows 80 shapes while the official province count is 82. Metro Manila, which is not a province, is drawn as one shape of its own, and three newer provinces sit inside their parents: Dinagat Islands, created in 2006, within Surigao del Norte; Davao Occidental, carved out of Davao del Sur in 2013, within Davao del Sur; and Maguindanao del Norte with Maguindanao del Sur, separated after the plebiscite of 17 September 2022, drawn as one undivided Maguindanao. For data imports listing all 82 provinces, merge Dinagat Islands into Surigao del Norte, Davao Occidental into Davao del Sur, and the two Maguindanao provinces into one; add a Metro Manila row if that shape needs a color.

Palawan is the largest province in the Philippines by area at 14,649.73 km² (5,656 sq mi), a long island chain lying between the South China Sea and the Sulu Sea. That figure excludes Puerto Princesa, the highly urbanized city on the same island that is administered independently, although the provincial capitol is located there. Isabela is the largest province on Luzon at 12,414.93 km² (4,793 sq mi), the second-largest in the country. At the other extreme, Batanes covers 219.01 km² (84.6 sq mi), roughly a sixty-seventh of Palawan's area, across ten small islands in the far north.

Cavite is the most populated province in the Philippines, with 4,344,829 residents at the 2020 Census, ahead of Bulacan at 3,708,890 and Laguna at 3,382,193. All three border Metro Manila, and Cavite belongs to Calabarzon, the country's most populous region at 16,195,042 people in 2020. Dasmariñas is Cavite's largest city, and the province runs from the Manila Bay shoreline up to the Tagaytay ridge above Taal Lake. Cebu recorded 3,325,385 residents in 2020, a total that excludes Cebu City, Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue, counted separately as highly urbanized cities.

Metro Manila is not a province. It is the National Capital Region, one of the country's 18 regions, and the only one containing no provinces: 16 cities plus the municipality of Pateros. Manila is the national capital, with 1,846,513 residents at the 2020 Census, while Quezon City, also in NCR, is the largest city in the Philippines at 2,960,048. The region as a whole counted 13,484,462 people in 2020 within 636.00 km² (245.56 sq mi). Because NCR is not a province, provincial datasets normally report it as a separate line beside Rizal, Bulacan and Cavite.

The newest provinces in the Philippines are Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur, which came into being when voters ratified Republic Act 11550 in a plebiscite on 17 September 2022 and the old province of Maguindanao was divided. Since then the official list has stood at 82 provinces. Before it, the most recent addition was Davao Occidental, separated from Davao del Sur under Republic Act 10360 and confirmed by plebiscite on 28 October 2013. None of the newest provinces — Dinagat Islands, created in 2006, included — appear as separate shapes here, which is why the map carries 79 province shapes rather than 82.

Regions and provinces serve different purposes in the Philippines. The 18 regions are administrative groupings that organize national government offices and statistical reporting, and apart from the Bangsamoro region they have no elected regional government. The 82 provinces are genuine local governments, each with an elected governor, vice governor and provincial board, and each subdivided into cities and municipalities. Every province belongs to exactly one region. The National Capital Region is the exception to the pattern, holding cities and one municipality but no provinces at all. Philippine Statistics Authority tables usually present provincial data region by region.

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao replaced the ARMM in 2019 and is the only Philippine region with its own parliament and elected regional government. Its provinces are Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur and Tawi-Tawi, together with the city of Cotabato, which joined through the 2019 plebiscite. Sulu voted against inclusion in that plebiscite, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that Sulu is not part of BARMM. Sulu remains a province of the Philippines regardless. Maguindanao was a single province until the split of September 2022.

Start from this page's Philippines map and open it in Ultimaps, a free map editor that runs in the browser — no download, and the free tier does not ask for an account. To color provinces from data, upload a spreadsheet where each row pairs a province name with a value; the matching shapes are shaded automatically. Manual coloring works too: choose a province such as Palawan or Cebu and give it any fill from the palette. You can rename or hide labels, change the typeface, adjust boundary thickness and background, and drop location markers with short captions on cities or coordinates. Finished maps export as PNG for presentations, PDF for print, or SVG for design software.