Also known as: Lalawigan ng Zamboanga del Sur
Zamboanga del Sur is a province in Region IX (Zamboanga Peninsula). Population 1.05M (PSA 2024 census), 1 component city + 26 municipalities, 681 barangays total, land area 4,484.21 km². Provincial capital: Pagadian City.
Zamboanga del Sur is a province in Region IX (Zamboanga Peninsula). Its capital is Pagadian City.
Zamboanga del Sur had 1,045,126 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.
Zamboanga del Sur covers 4,484.21 km², per the PSA Philippine Statistical Yearbook figure used on this page.
Zamboanga del Sur has 1 component city and 26 municipalities (27 LGUs under the province), per PSA's Philippine Standard Geographic Code (2Q 2026), and 681 barangays. Zamboanga City is a highly urbanized city located within Zamboanga del Sur but administered independently of the province, so it is not counted above; counting it, there are 2 cities in all.
Zamboanga del Sur's 1 component city is Pagadian City. Its 26 municipalities are Aurora, Bayog, Dimataling, Dinas, Dumalinao, Dumingag, Guipos, Josefina, Kumalarang, Labangan, Lakewood, Lapuyan, Mahayag, Margosatubig, Midsalip, Molave, Pitogo, Ramon Magsaysay, San Miguel, San Pablo, Sominot, Tabina, Tambulig, Tigbao, Tukuran and Vincenzo A. Sagun. Zamboanga City is a highly urbanized city located within Zamboanga del Sur but administered independently of the province, so it is not counted above; counting it, there are 2 cities in all.
Zamboanga del Sur occupies the base of the Zamboanga Peninsula in western Mindanao, a province of coconut and rubber plantations, corn and rice lowlands, and a coastline that makes it one of the country's higher-producing provinces for marine fisheries. The economy still runs substantially on agriculture: coconut and rubber together draw hundreds of millions of pesos in investment, seaweed farming is expanding along the coast, and a large integrated coconut-processing plant planned for San Miguel is expected to add thousands of jobs to a sector that already anchors the province.
The province's shape and scope have changed more than most in the region: Zamboanga del Sur used to extend across a much larger stretch of the southern peninsula, including territory that is now Zamboanga Sibugay, split off as its own province under Republic Act 8973 and ratified by plebiscite in February 2001. What remains is a 26-municipality province built around Pagadian City, a coastal component city that serves as the seat of the provincial government.
Zamboanga City, the peninsula's largest and most recognized city, is often assumed to be part of Zamboanga del Sur — it shares the name, and the Philippine Statistics Authority groups it with the province for reporting purposes — but it is a separately chartered, highly urbanized city, geographically distinct at the peninsula's tip, and entirely outside the provincial government's jurisdiction. Pagadian, not Zamboanga City, is where the province's own planning and coordination work happens.
Hazard-wise, the peninsula sits in a genuinely active seismic zone, bounded by the Sulu Trench to the west and the Cotabato Trench to the south, both capable of major earthquakes. That risk isn't abstract — a magnitude-7.8 earthquake offshore Sarangani in June 2026 triggered a tsunami warning that reached Zamboanga del Sur's coastal municipalities. Combined with a mountainous interior where land classification and tenure questions run alongside the usual settlement and agricultural pressure, that gives the Provincial Planning and Development Office a wider mix of hazard and land-use issues to fold into CLUP review than a typical lowland province — coastal earthquake and tsunami exposure alongside upland terrain, across a province still working with a smaller footprint than the one it planned around before 2001.
Key industries: Coconut + rubber processing, Seaweed farming, Marine fisheries (3rd-highest producing province nationally), Corn + rice (palay), Livestock feed milling, Furniture + construction materials manufacturing
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.
Zamboanga del Sur's provincial government coordinates CLUP and land-use planning for 26 municipalities and Pagadian City from a province that lost roughly half its former territory to Zamboanga Sibugay in 2001 and sits next to — but does not govern — the peninsula's largest city, Zamboanga. Nova Gov is built for exactly this kind of fragmented, re-scoped provincial coordination, and the pilot program is designed to give a planning office like Zamboanga del Sur's a clearer working view across its own LGUs without needing to chase down each one separately.
Zamboanga del Sur's 26 municipalities and Pagadian City plan around a smaller footprint than the province had before Zamboanga Sibugay split off — next to a peninsula-defining city the province doesn't govern. If your planning office needs a clearer working view across that many LGUs, Nova Gov's pilot program is worth a conversation.
Talk to the pilot team →We build custom software around CLUP, CDP and zoning work, for LGU planning offices and for the planning firms LGUs hire. Free 30-minute workflow call, then a fixed written quote.
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