Also known as: Cotabato, Lalawigan ng Cotabato
North Cotabato is a province in Region XII (SOCCSKSARGEN). Population 1.29M (PSA 2024 census), 1 city + 17 municipalities, 543 barangays total, land area 9,317.3 km². Provincial capital: Kidapawan City (component city; the independent Cotabato City — administratively separate and now part of BARMM — is not part of this province).
North Cotabato is a province in Region XII (SOCCSKSARGEN). Its capital is Kidapawan City (component city; the independent Cotabato City — administratively separate and now part of BARMM — is not part of this province).
North Cotabato had 1,286,142 residents in the 2024 census (PSA 2024 Census of Population (POPCEN 2024), reference date July 1, 2024). That is the most recent official count. There is no 2026 census result, so any 2026 population figure is an estimate.
North Cotabato covers 9,317.3 km², per the PSA Philippine Statistical Yearbook figure used on this page.
North Cotabato has 1 component city and 17 municipalities (18 LGUs under the province), per PSA's Philippine Standard Geographic Code (2Q 2026), and 543 barangays.
North Cotabato's 1 component city is Kidapawan City. Its 17 municipalities are Alamada, Aleosan, Antipas, Arakan, Banisilan, Carmen, Kabacan, Libungan, Magpet, Makilala, Matalam, Midsayap, M'lang, Pigkawayan, Pikit, President Roxas and Tulunan.
North Cotabato — officially just "Cotabato" in PSA records, but almost universally called North Cotabato to avoid confusion with Cotabato City — sits in the SOCCSKSARGEN region of central Mindanao, bordered by Bukidnon, Lanao del Sur, Davao del Sur, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, and Cotabato City itself. That last neighbor is the point of most confusion: Cotabato City shares the name but has never been part of the province's government, and since a February 2019 plebiscite it has belonged to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) rather than Region XII.
The same 2019 plebiscite carved a second, less visible complication directly out of the province's own territory. Sixty-three barangays across six municipalities — Aleosan, Carmen, Kabacan, Midsayap, Pigcawayan, and Pikit — voted to join BARMM and were formally designated a Special Geographic Area in 2020. Those barangays are still geographically inside their original municipalities, but many governance functions now run through Bangsamoro institutions instead of the provincial government — a genuinely unusual planning situation where a single municipality's CLUP has to account for territory it no longer fully administers.
Economically, North Cotabato is one of Mindanao's most productive agricultural provinces — official descriptions call it a major food basket for the island, producing corn, rice, coconut, and raw and semi-processed rubber, alongside freshwater fisheries drawn from the province's share of Liguasan Marsh, a roughly 2,200-square-kilometer wetland it holds jointly with Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, and Sultan Kudarat. On the province's southern edge, Kidapawan City sits at the foot of Mount Apo, the country's highest peak, hosting the Mount Apo Geothermal Power Plant (supplying the Mindanao grid since 1997) inside a protected natural park whose joint management board also seats neighboring Davao del Sur, Davao City, and two more of North Cotabato's own municipalities, Makilala and Magpet.
Put together, North Cotabato's provincial planning office is coordinating standard agricultural-zoning CLUP work across 17 municipalities and 1 city, a shared wetland spanning three other provinces, a shared volcanic protected area spanning two more, and six municipalities with barangays now under a different region's government entirely — a jurisdictional layering that RA 7160's province-level coordination role was never originally designed to anticipate.
Key industries: Agriculture (corn, rice, coconut — a major Mindanao food-producing province), Rubber production (raw and semi-processed), Freshwater fisheries (Liguasan Marsh), Geothermal energy (Mount Apo), Livestock, Mount Apo ecotourism
More on the regulatory framework: CLUP explainer · RA 7160 explainer · SGLG explainer · full glossary. Working a CLUP review cycle? Run the CLUP readiness self-check or see CLUP compliance monitoring.
North Cotabato's provincial planning office coordinates CLUP submissions from 17 municipalities and 1 city, six of which have barangays now administered under BARMM rather than the province, on top of a shared wetland and a shared volcanic protected area that each cross into neighboring provinces. Nova Gov's pilot program is designed to help a planning office facing that level of jurisdictional overlap keep one clear, current picture of where each LGU's own CLUP submission actually stands.
North Cotabato's provincial planning office coordinates 18 LGUs, six with barangays now under separate BARMM administration, plus a wetland and a volcanic protected area shared with neighboring provinces. See how Nova Gov's pilot program approaches multi-LGU CLUP coordination.
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