A barangay (Filipino: baranggay) is the smallest local government unit in the Philippines and is the Filipino term for a village, district, ward or town. Municipalities and cities are composed of barangays.

Each barangay is headed by a barangay captain (punong barangay) i.e. the district mayor, who leads the barangay council (sangguniang barangay) composed of barangay councilors (kagawad). Every barangay also has a Youth Council ("Sangguniang Kabataan" or "SK") composed of the SK President or Chairman and SK Councilors, who direct the youth-oriented activities, such as basketball leagues and other youth oriented activities, in the barangay.

Historically, a barangay is a relatively small community of around 50 to 100 families. Most villages have only thirty to one hundred houses and the population varies from one hundred to five hundred persons. According to Legazpi, he found communities with twenty to thirty people only. Many coastal villages in the Visayan region consisted of no more than eight to ten houses. The word itself is derived from an ancient Malay boat called a balangay. This connection between community and boat supports certain theories on the history of the pre-colonial Philippines, specifically, that each original coastal “barangay” formed as a result of settlers arriving by boat from other places in Southeast Asia.

Most communities were coastal or riverine in nature. T