Also known as: Lalawigan ng Tarlac, Lalawigan ning Tarlac
Tarlac is a province in Region III (Central Luzon). Population 1.57M (PSA 2024 census), 1 city + 17 municipalities, 511 barangays total, land area 3,046.49 km². Provincial capital: Tarlac City (component city).
Tarlac is a province in Region III (Central Luzon). Its capital is Tarlac City (component city).
No. Tarlac is a province in Region III (Central Luzon), outside Metro Manila (the National Capital Region).
Tarlac had 1,568,162 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.
Tarlac covers 3,046.49 km², per the PSA Philippine Statistical Yearbook figure used on this page.
Tarlac has 1 component city and 17 municipalities (18 LGUs under the province), per PSA's Philippine Standard Geographic Code (2Q 2026), and 511 barangays.
Tarlac's 1 component city is Tarlac City. Its 17 municipalities are Anao, Bamban, Camiling, Capas, Concepcion, Gerona, La Paz, Mayantoc, Moncada, Paniqui, Pura, Ramos, San Clemente, San Jose, San Manuel, Santa Ignacia and Victoria.
Tarlac sits in the plains of Central Luzon, bordered by Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, Zambales, and Pampanga, and its own provincial planners describe it as straddling two of Luzon's designated development super-regions at once — the Luzon Urban Beltway and the Northern Luzon Agri-Business Quadrangle — with the Subic-Clark-Tarlac corridor running directly through provincial territory. That dual identity, agricultural heartland on one side and industrial-logistics corridor on the other, runs through almost every land-use decision the province makes.
The agricultural side is substantial: rice and sugarcane are the principal crops, supported by sugar refining, rice and corn milling, and food-processing industries built up over generations. The industrial side is anchored by the Clark Freeport and Special Economic Zone, which extends into Tarlac's municipalities of Capas and Bamban — and inside that zone sits New Clark City, a 9,450-hectare planned metropolis conceived by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority in 2012 and master-planned by AECOM and Surbana Jurong as the country's "first smart, green, and disaster-resilient city," designed to eventually house up to 1.2 million people. A national-government mega-project of that scale sitting inside two of the province's own municipal CLUPs is a coordination problem few provinces face at this scale.
Tarlac also lives with a permanent hazard legacy: a portion of Mount Pinatubo's own watershed (the volcano's summit crater itself sits just across the boundary in Zambales) drains through Tarlac's river systems, and lahar and flood-sediment risk from the 1991 eruption still shapes where and how municipalities along the Bamban and O'Donnell corridors can safely permit new settlement. Layering a still-developing national capital-in-waiting on top of a lahar-affected floodplain, inside a province that is otherwise built around rice and sugarcane, means Tarlac's PDPFP has to hold together three very different planning realities — agricultural, industrial, and hazard-driven — across its 1 city and 17 municipalities, each experiencing that mix in different proportions depending on its distance from Clark.
Key industries: Agriculture (rice and sugarcane), Sugar refining and rice/corn milling, Aerospace, logistics and industrial development (Clark Freeport Zone / New Clark City), Renewable energy (rooftop solar), Food processing (chicharon), Corn and coconut farming
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.
Tarlac's provincial planning office has to track CLUP submissions from 18 LGUs that range from century-old rice and sugarcane towns to Capas and Bamban, where a national-government-driven, 9,450-hectare planned city is still under active construction on former Clark Air Base land. Nova Gov's pilot program is designed to help a planning office like Tarlac's keep one current, working picture of where each of those LGU submissions actually stands as that development pressure keeps shifting.
Tarlac's 18 LGUs range from centuries-old rice and sugarcane towns to Capas and Bamban, where New Clark City is still under active construction. See how Nova Gov's pilot program approaches multi-LGU CLUP coordination.
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