Heritage · Malidegao, Special Geographic Area
Fort Pikit
An 1893 Spanish stone fort on a hilltop, a National Historical Landmark since 2012.
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Area guide
Eight municipalities constituted in 2024, with nothing yet built for visitors.
The Special Geographic Area is 63 barangays in North Cotabato that voted in the 2019 plebiscite to leave their province and join the Bangsamoro. They spent the following years administratively attached to towns outside the region, and were constituted into 8 new municipalities — Kadayangan, Kapalawan, Ligawasan, Malidegao, Nabalawag, Old Kaabakan, Pahamuddin and Tugunan — in 2024.
It is included here because leaving it out would be its own kind of claim. But it is a new civil administration standing itself up, not a destination: there are no hotels, no tourism office to call, and no signposted anything. The landscape is the western edge of Ligawasan Marsh and the farmland around it, and the interest is genuinely in what is being built rather than in what there is to see.
Anyone traveling here should be doing so for a reason — work, family, research — and should arrange it through the municipality directly.
1 place to see in Special Geographic Area.
Not applicable. Arrange your stay outside the area, and your visit through the municipality.
There is no visitor accommodation in the 8 new municipalities. They were constituted in 2024 and are still building civil administration; a lodging market is a long way down that list.
Anyone with business here stays in Cotabato City, or in Midsayap or Pikit in North Cotabato, and travels in.
Not applicable.
Nothing on this page has been verified on the ground, and no establishment is endorsed. Lodging in this region opens, closes and changes hands quickly, and the only reliable confirmation is a phone call before you travel. Where a trip depends on a bed being there, confirm it directly with the property or the area’s tourism office.
Treat as you would the neighbouring Maguindanao del Sur municipalities: arrange through local contacts and the LGU, and do not travel here on spec. Administrative arrangements are still settling, which affects everything from who to ask for permission to who answers the phone.
Drier from December to April; marsh-edge roads are poor after sustained rain.
8 cities and municipalities.