How Albania Is Divided Up

The two levels

Albania has two levels of local government. The county (qark) is the larger unit — there are twelve, each named after its main town. Inside the counties are municipalities (bashki) — there are sixty-one, and they are the level that actually delivers local services.

Municipalities are further divided into administrative units (njësi administrative), which are usually the former communes. These are not separate authorities; they are offices of the municipality.

What changed in 2014

Before the 2014 territorial reform Albania had 373 local government units — 65 municipalities and 308 communes, many of them very small. The reform merged them into 61 municipalities. Older sources, maps and datasets still use the pre-2014 divisions, which is a common source of confusion when comparing statistics across years.

How the map has been redrawn

Albania's internal boundaries have been rearranged by almost every regime that has ruled it. Under the Ottomans the Albanian lands were split between several provinces (vilayets) — Shkodra, Janina, Manastir and Kosovo — none of them Albanian as such, which is one reason the 19th-century national movement campaigned for a single Albanian province.

The independent state organised itself into prefectures between the wars. The communist government replaced them with districts (rrethe), which became the familiar unit of planning, statistics and everyday identity for half a century; many people's sense of 'where they are from' still follows the old districts.

The twelve counties (qarqe) were created in 2000, during decentralisation reforms that followed the 1998 constitution, and the 2014 territorial reform then merged the local layer underneath them. The result is a much simpler map than the one most Albanians grew up with — and a reason old and new place names, units and figures so often appear side by side.

Why this matters when reading data

A population figure for 'Berat' can mean the city, the municipality (which includes surrounding villages) or the county (which includes four other municipalities). They are very different numbers. Every place page in this Atlas states which unit a figure refers to.

The twelve counties

• Berat · Dibër · Durrës · Elbasan · Fier · Gjirokastër
• Korçë · Kukës · Lezhë · Shkodër · Tiranë · Vlorë