Also known as: Lalawigan ng Nueva Ecija, Nueva Écija
Nueva Ecija is a province in Region III (Central Luzon). Population 2.40M (PSA 2024 census), 5 cities + 27 municipalities, 849 barangays total, land area 5,689.69 km². Provincial capital: Palayan City (component city; Cabanatuan City, also under the province, is Nueva Ecija's largest and most prominent city).
Nueva Ecija is a province in Region III (Central Luzon). Its capital is Palayan City (component city; Cabanatuan City, also under the province, is Nueva Ecija's largest and most prominent city).
No. Nueva Ecija is a province in Region III (Central Luzon), outside Metro Manila (the National Capital Region).
Nueva Ecija had 2,395,816 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.
Nueva Ecija covers 5,689.69 km², per the PSA Philippine Statistical Yearbook figure used on this page.
Nueva Ecija has 5 component cities and 27 municipalities (32 LGUs under the province), per PSA's Philippine Standard Geographic Code (2Q 2026), and 849 barangays.
Nueva Ecija's 5 component cities are Cabanatuan City, Gapan City, Palayan City, San Jose City and Science City of Muñoz. Its 27 municipalities are Aliaga, Bongabon, Cabiao, Carranglan, Cuyapo, Gabaldon, General Mamerto Natividad, General Tinio, Guimba, Jaen, Laur, Licab, Llanera, Lupao, Nampicuan, Pantabangan, Peñaranda, Quezon, Rizal, San Antonio, San Isidro, San Leonardo, Santa Rosa, Santo Domingo, Talavera, Talugtug and Zaragoza.
Nueva Ecija is the largest province in Central Luzon by land area and sits entirely inland — no coastline, no independent highly urbanized city carving out its own jurisdiction, just five component cities and 27 municipalities sharing one contiguous rice-plain-to-foothill geography. The province is anchored by two very different urban centers: Cabanatuan City, the commercial and population hub, and Palayan City, the much smaller purpose-built seat of provincial government established in 1965. Both remain fully under the province's planning authority, which at least simplifies one layer of coordination that provinces with an independent HUC capital don't have.
The province's economic identity is inseparable from rice. Long known as the “Rice Granary of the Philippines,” Nueva Ecija hosts the Philippine Rice Research Institute's main station in Science City of Muñoz alongside Central Luzon State University, and its farmland is fed by the Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation System (UPRIIS) — a network built around Pantabangan Dam that extends across 147,000-plus hectares in Nueva Ecija, Bulacan, Pampanga, and Tarlac. That scale means land-use decisions here rarely stay contained within one municipality's boundary, let alone one province's.
Nueva Ecija also sits at the headwaters of the Pampanga River Basin, which PAGASA has run a dedicated flood forecasting system for since the 1970s. Flooding in upstream municipalities like Zaragoza, Licab, and San Isidro — documented as recently as 2024 and 2026 — travels downstream into Pampanga province within days, making upstream land-use and flood-control planning a genuinely cross-provincial concern. PHIVOLCS also lists Nueva Ecija among the provinces with meaningfully elevated earthquake risk, with the Philippine Fault Zone passing near San Jose City.
The more recent tension is growth-driven: the Central Luzon Link Expressway, now under construction from Tarlac City through Cabanatuan to San Jose City, is opening up formerly rice-dependent municipalities like Talavera and Llanera to commercial and residential conversion. Land-use studies of Gapan City and San Leonardo have already documented measurable agricultural-to-built-up conversion over the past several years. For a province whose economic identity and irrigation infrastructure both depend on keeping farmland in production, coordinating 5 cities and 27 municipalities through this transition is the core CLUP challenge Nueva Ecija's provincial planning office faces today.
Key industries: Rice production (“Rice Granary of the Philippines”), Rice research (PhilRice headquarters), Inland aquaculture (tilapia), Onion farming (Bongabon), Higher education (Central Luzon State University)
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.
Nueva Ecija's provincial planning office has to reconcile 27 municipalities and 5 component cities' worth of CLUP submissions against a shared irrigation system and a river basin that doesn't respect municipal boundaries — coordination work currently spread across paper submissions, spreadsheets, and individual LGU relationships. Nova Gov's pilot program is built for exactly this kind of multi-LGU planning-office workload, and is designed to help a small provincial team keep a consistent view of CLUP submission status across all 32 LGUs without adding headcount.
Nueva Ecija's 5 cities and 27 municipalities share one river basin, one irrigation system, and one agricultural identity — but CLUP submissions still move through the provincial planning office one LGU at a time. See how Nova Gov's pilot program approaches multi-LGU CLUP coordination.
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