Philippines Map

The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,641 islands on the western rim of the Pacific. It is bounded by the Philippine Sea to the east, the South China Sea to the west (the Philippines calls the waters within its own maritime zones the West Philippine Sea), the Celebes Sea to the south and the Luzon Strait, which separates it from Taiwan, to the north. The official land area is 300,000 square kilometers. The 2024 census counted 112.7 million people, and the UN puts the total at about 117 million (UN World Population Prospects, 2025 estimate). Three island groups organise the map: Luzon in the north, the largest island and the site of Manila; the Visayas, a central cluster that includes Cebu, Panay, Negros, Leyte, Samar and Bohol; and Mindanao in the south, with the Sulu archipelago trailing toward Borneo. Palawan, the long island pointing southwest toward Borneo, is administratively part of the Luzon group.

Volcanoes, trenches and mountain spines

The islands sit on the Pacific Ring of Fire, between the Philippine Sea plate and the Eurasian plate. Off the east coast, the Philippine Trench drops to more than 10,000 meters at the Emden Deep, one of the deepest points in the oceans. On land, the Cordillera Central of northern Luzon holds the Ifugao rice terraces, a World Heritage site, and the Sierra Madre, the country's longest mountain range, runs down Luzon's Pacific coast and shields the lowlands from some typhoons. Mount Pinatubo's 1991 eruption was one of the largest of the 20th century and cooled global temperatures for about two years; Mayon in Albay is known for its near-perfect cone and frequent activity, and Taal, south of Manila, rises from a lake that fills an older caldera. The highest point is Mount Apo, 2,954 meters, near Davao in Mindanao. Other landscapes worth knowing are the Chocolate Hills of Bohol, the limestone islands of El Nido and Coron in Palawan, the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River and the Tubbataha Reefs in the Sulu Sea, the last two also World Heritage sites.

Typhoons and the best time to visit

About 20 tropical cyclones enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility each year, and several make landfall, most often on Luzon and the eastern Visayas between July and November. Typhoon Haiyan (known locally as Yolanda), which struck Leyte and Samar in November 2013, killed more than 6,000 people. The southwest monsoon (habagat) brings the wet season from about June to October on the western side of the country, while the northeast monsoon (amihan), from about November to February, is cooler and drier in the west but wet on the eastern coasts of Samar, Bicol and Mindanao. For most travellers the dry months from December to May are the safest time to visit, with March to May the hottest. Most of Mindanao lies south of the usual typhoon tracks.

Regions, provinces and the Bangsamoro

The country is divided into 18 regions, which group 82 provinces and the cities that are independent of them. Most regions carry a number as well as a name, from Ilocos (Region I) in the north to Caraga (Region XIII) in northeastern Mindanao. The others are the National Capital Region, which is Metro Manila; the Cordillera Administrative Region in the northern highlands; the Negros Island Region, re-created in 2024 from Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental and Siquijor; and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). BARMM was set up in 2019 under the peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and has its own parliament. The Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that Sulu is not part of the region, and BARMM's first regular parliamentary election, postponed several times, was held in September 2026, with no party winning a majority. Below the provinces are about 1,640 cities and municipalities and more than 42,000 barangays, the smallest unit of local government.

Major cities

• Manila - the capital, founded by the Spanish in 1571 on the site of an earlier Muslim settlement on Manila Bay; the walled Intramuros district survives, and the 2024 census counted 1.9 million people in the city proper, one of the highest urban densities in the world.
• Quezon City - the most populous city, with 3.08 million people in 2024, and national capital from 1948 to 1976; it is home to the House of Representatives and the University of the Philippines Diliman.
• Davao City - Mindanao's main city, with 1.85 million people (2024 census) spread over one of the largest city territories in the country, at the foot of Mount Apo.
• Cebu City - 965,000 people (2024), on the site of the first permanent Spanish settlement, founded by Legazpi in 1565, and the core of Metro Cebu, the main port and airline hub of the Visayas.
• Zamboanga City - about 1 million people (2024) on the southwestern tip of Mindanao, where many residents speak Chavacano, a Spanish-based creole.

Colonial history and the sea disputes

Magellan's expedition reached the islands in 1521, and Spain ruled from 1565 until 1898, naming the islands after King Philip II. That legacy is visible in the Catholic faith of nearly 80% of Filipinos; with Timor-Leste, the Philippines is one of Asia's two Catholic-majority countries. Islam, which arrived through the Sulu Sea trade before the Spanish, is followed by about 6% of the population, mainly in western Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago. After the Philippine Revolution and the Spanish-American War, the United States took control in 1898, and independence followed on 4 July 1946, after Japanese occupation during the Second World War. Filipino (based on Tagalog) and English are the official languages, and more than 170 languages are spoken across the islands. The Philippines was a founding member of ASEAN in 1967, and remittances from millions of Filipinos working abroad, along with call centres and other outsourced services, are pillars of its economy.

In the South China Sea, the Philippines claims Scarborough Shoal and the Kalayaan island group in the Spratlys, areas also claimed by China and Taiwan, and in parts of the Spratlys by Vietnam and Malaysia. In 2016 an arbitral tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled largely in the Philippines' favour on maritime entitlements; China rejects the ruling, and confrontations between the two countries' vessels around Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal have continued.