Also known as: Lalawigan ng Southern Leyte
Southern Leyte is a province in Region VIII (Eastern Visayas). Population 434K (PSA 2024 census), 1 city + 18 municipalities, 500 barangays total, land area 1,801.46 km². Provincial capital: Maasin City.
Southern Leyte is a province in Region VIII (Eastern Visayas). Its capital is Maasin City.
Southern Leyte had 434,372 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.
Southern Leyte covers 1,801.46 km², per the PSA Philippine Statistical Yearbook figure used on this page.
Southern Leyte has 1 component city and 18 municipalities (19 LGUs under the province), per PSA's Philippine Standard Geographic Code (2Q 2026), and 500 barangays.
Southern Leyte's 1 component city is Maasin City. Its 18 municipalities are Anahawan, Bontoc, Hinunangan, Hinundayan, Libagon, Liloan, Limasawa, Macrohon, Malitbog, Padre Burgos, Pintuyan, Saint Bernard, San Francisco, San Juan, San Ricardo, Silago, Sogod and Tomas Oppus.
Southern Leyte was created on May 22, 1959 by Republic Act No. 2227, carved from Leyte's southern municipalities and inaugurated in 1960 with Maasin as capital. Maasin City itself is a 4th-class component city, not an independent or highly urbanized city, so its population is fully counted within the province's own total.
Key industries: Agriculture (coconut/copra, abaca), Fishing (Hinunangan, Sogod, and Cabalian bays), Handicrafts
The province's defining land-use case study is the February 17, 2006 Guinsaugon rock slide-debris avalanche in St. Bernard municipality, in which a ridge face along the Philippine Fault Zone collapsed and buried the village — estimates of the dead range from 1,126 to nearly 1,800. The documented trigger was roughly 1,200mm of rainfall over the preceding ten days; a minor earthquake recorded around the same time is now understood to have most likely been generated by the landslide itself. A public claim that illegal logging caused the disaster remains contested rather than established — the more defensible land-use lesson is the risk of settlement on steep, fault-line terrain. On a lighter note, Limasawa, one of the province's municipalities, is presented as the site of the first Catholic Mass in the Philippines, March 31, 1521.
Key industries: Agriculture (coconut/copra, abaca), Fishing (Hinunangan, Sogod, and Cabalian bays), Handicrafts
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.
A province whose defining land-use case study is a catastrophic settlement disaster on fault-line terrain, now two decades in the past but still directly relevant to hazard-zone planning, is exactly the kind of long-memory risk context a live cross-LGU dashboard is built to keep visible for a PPDO.
With a documented fault-line settlement disaster in its own history, Southern Leyte's PPDO has real reason to keep hazard-zone land use current. A Nova Gov pilot brings that alongside CLUP and SGLG status into one view across all 19 LGUs.
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