How Many Provinces Does Algeria Have? All 69 Wilayas Listed

Algeria has 69 provinces, called wilayas. Law No. 26-06 of 4 April 2026 raised the count from 58 to 69 by creating eleven new wilayas, numbered 59 to 69, in the High Plateaus and on the northern edge of the Sahara. Their powers are being handed over gradually and they take full charge on 1 January 2027, so many maps and websites still say 58.

Before the 2026 law, the answer stood at 58 from December 2019, at 48 from 1984, and at 31 from 1974. Each of those numbers can still be found in textbooks, travel guides and quiz sites, which is why the question gets so many different answers. Below is how the count reached 69, the full numbered list, and how a wilaya is run.

Five Maps in Sixty Years: 15, 31, 48, 58, 69

At independence in 1962, Algeria inherited 15 French départements. In 1968 they were renamed wilayas, the Arabic word for province, but the boundaries stayed colonial. The first real redrawing came with the ordinance of 2 July 1974, which created 31 wilayas and gave them the two-digit numbers still in use today.

Law No. 84-09 of 4 February 1984 on the territorial organisation of the country added 17 more, making 48. That map lasted 35 years and is the one most adults in Algeria learned at school. It also set up the communes, which have numbered 1,541 ever since.

The south was the next problem. Some southern wilayas were bigger than European countries, and towns such as In Salah or Djanet were a day's drive or more from their wilaya capital. In 2015 the government made ten southern towns "delegated wilayas" with their own walis (governors) but limited powers. Law No. 19-12 of 11 December 2019 promoted all ten to full wilayas, numbered 49 to 58. They were set up over 2020 and 2021.

The latest step covers the steppe belt between the coast and the desert. On 16 November 2025 the Council of Ministers, chaired by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, approved making eleven administrative districts into full wilayas. Parliament adopted the bill in March 2026 and it became Law No. 26-06 of 4 April 2026. Presidential Decree No. 26-206 of 25 May 2026 then set the new wilayas' names, capitals and numbers. Each one is named after its capital town.

The Eleven Wilayas Added in 2026

None of the 2026 wilayas is in the deep Sahara. Instead they are steppe and pre-Saharan market towns that had outgrown the wilayas they belonged to. Nine older wilayas each gave up territory. Djelfa, the most populous wilaya of the High Plateaus, lost two:

• 59 Aflou, from Laghouat, in the Djebel Amour
• 60 Barika, from Batna, on the Hodna plain
• 61 El Kantara, from Biskra, at the gorge where the Aurès opens onto the desert
• 62 Bir El Ater, from Tébessa, a phosphate town close to the Tunisian border
• 63 El Aricha, from Tlemcen, on the steppe near the Moroccan border
• 64 Ksar Chellala, from Tiaret
• 65 Aïn Oussera and 66 Messaad, both from Djelfa
• 67 Ksar El Boukhari, from Médéa
• 68 Bou Saâda, from M'Sila, the oasis town painted by Étienne Dinet
• 69 El Abiodh Sidi Cheikh, from El Bayadh

No new communes were created. The eleven wilayas are made up of existing communes taken from their parent wilayas, so the national total is still 1,541. Executive Decree No. 26-208 of 26 May 2026 sets out how buildings, staff, assets and debts are shared out. Until the new walis are fully in post, the parent wilayas keep the budgets, and the handover must be complete by 31 December 2026.

All 69 Wilayas by Number

Wilayas 1 to 48 keep the numbers they were given in 1974 and 1984. Then come the ten southern wilayas of 2019 and the eleven of 2026.

Why Algiers Is 16 and Oran Is 31

The order of the first 31 numbers puzzles many people reading them in French or English, where Adrar, Chlef and Laghouat do not look alphabetical. In Arabic they are. The 1974 wilayas were numbered in Arabic alphabetical order, ignoring the article "al-": أدرار (Adrar) first, then الشلف (Chlef), الأغواط (Laghouat) and أم البواقي (Oum El Bouaghi), on through الجزائر (Algiers) at 16 to وهران (Oran) at 31. The 17 wilayas of 1984 were numbered after them, from 32 El Bayadh to 48 Relizane, again roughly in Arabic order. The 2019 and 2026 wilayas follow the same pattern, so the newest always have the highest numbers.

Most Algerians know these numbers well because they are printed on every car. A standard plate has a serial number, then a three-digit group for the vehicle category and year, then the wilaya code. On the plate above, "114" means category 1 (a passenger car) registered in 2014, and "11" means Tamanrasset. Drivers say "a 16" for a car from Algiers or "a 31" for one from Oran. The codes are also used in postal codes and on official documents. Codes 59 to 69 go on plates from 1 January 2027, under an order published in the Journal Officiel in June 2026.

Wali, Daïra, Commune: How a Wilaya Is Run

Algerian local government has three levels. Each one has an appointed official, and the wilaya and the commune also have an elected council.

• Wilaya. Run by a wali appointed by presidential decree, who represents the state. The elected council is the Assemblée Populaire de Wilaya (APW), which votes the wilaya's budget and development plans.
• Daïra. The district level, with roughly 550 daïras nationally. A daïra is run by a chef de daïra who answers to the wali. It has no elected council and acts mainly as an administrative relay between the wilaya and its communes.
• Commune (baladiya). There are 1,541 communes. Each has an elected Assemblée Populaire Communale (APC) led by its president, who acts as mayor. The commune runs civil records, local roads, markets and primary school buildings.

The number of communes in a wilaya varies a lot. Algiers has 57 communes in about 1,190 square kilometres. Several of the 2019 Saharan wilayas have only two or three communes, each covering an area the size of a small country.

Tell, High Plateaus and Sahara: Where the Wilayas Fall

Algeria covers about 2.38 million square kilometres, more than any other country in Africa, but most Algerians live on a narrow strip of it. The wilayas reflect this. In the Tell, the hilly coastal belt from Tlemcen to El Tarf, wilayas are small and crowded. Algiers is the smallest by area and the most populous: the 2008 census counted almost 3 million people in its 1,190 square kilometres, and it has grown well beyond that since. Close behind it in population are Sétif, Oran, Djelfa and Tizi Ouzou.

The High Plateaus to the south are steppe used for sheep grazing and cereals. Their wilayas are bigger and were growing fast, which is why the 2026 reform focused there. For more on the scale of the territory, see our guide to how big Algeria is.

The Sahara covers more than four-fifths of the country but holds only about a tenth of the population. Tamanrasset, which includes most of the Hoggar massif and Mount Tahat (2,908 m), is the largest wilaya even after In Salah and In Guezzam were split off in 2019. That split cut its area from about 558,000 to about 337,000 square kilometres, still almost as large as Germany. Adrar, Illizi, Tindouf and Ouargla are also very large. The 2019 reform split the desert into more units, while the 2026 reform added units where the population was concentrated.

Algeria Compared with Morocco and Tunisia

Algeria's two Maghreb neighbours have divided their land in different ways, and the comparison shows how unusually fine Algeria's grid has become.

Morocco uses two tiers. Since the 2015 regionalisation it has had 12 regions, each with an elected council, divided into 75 prefectures and provinces. Morocco's top tier is therefore far smaller than Algeria's, with about a sixth as many units, and its provinces sit one level lower. Moroccan counts include the territory of Western Sahara, whose status is disputed. Our post on how many regions Morocco has covers that system in detail.

Tunisia uses the same Arabic word, wilaya, usually translated as governorate. It has 24 of them for about 12 million people, roughly half a million each. Algeria now has around 680,000 people per wilaya. In 2022 and 2023 Tunisia added five "districts" (aqalim) above the governorates, which works in the opposite direction from Algeria. Tunisia is grouping its governorates into larger units, while Algeria keeps splitting its wilayas into smaller ones.

Libya, to the east, has 22 districts (shabiyat), but its divided government since 2014 has made them less important in practice. Algeria's 69 wilayas, led by appointed walis, are the most centralised top tier in the region.

Some wilayas, including Tlemcen, El Tarf, Tébessa, Tindouf, In Guezzam and Djanet, sit on international borders. You can see which countries they face in our guide to the seven countries that border Algeria.