2018 in the Philippines
overview of Philippines-related events during the year of 2018
2018 in the Philippines details events of note that happened in the Philippines in 2018.
Incumbents
President: Rodrigo Duterte (PDP–Laban)
Vice President: Leni Robredo (Liberal)
Congress (17th):
Senate President:
Aquilino Pimentel III (PDP–Laban) (until May 21)
Tito Sotto (NPC) (from May 21)
House Speaker:
Pantaleon Alvarez (PDP–Laban) (until July 23)
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (PDP–Laban) (from July 23)
Chief Justice:
Maria Lourdes Sereno (until May 11)
Antonio Carpio (acting) (May 14 – August 25); (October 11 – November 28)
Teresita De Castro (August 28 – October 10)
Lucas Bersamin (from November 28)
Events
January
January 1 – Republic Act No. 10963, widely known as the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Law (TRAIN Law), takes effect.
January 5 – Former Palawan Governor Joel Reyes is released from detention after the Court of Appeals resolved in his favor a petition in connection with his murder case for the killing of broadcaster Dr. Gerry Ortega in 2011.
January 22 – Mayon Volcano's alert status is raised to Alert Level 4 due to intensified volcanic activities. The day before, the volcano shoots 200 m (660 ft) to 500 m (1,600 ft) to the air and generated ash plumes that reached 1.3 km (0.81 mi) above the summit. The province of Albay declares a state of calamity days earlier on January 16 due to continuous volcanic activity.
January 23 – The Supreme Court approves the funding for the ₱3.8-billion Motor Vehicle License Plate Standardization Program (MVPSP), clearing the way for the release to motorists of 700,000 license plates turned over by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to the Land Transportation Office (LTO) as constitutional.
January 25 – Police Officer 3 Carlos Baccali Bocaig, a survivor of the 2015 Mamasapano firefight, dies from a grenade explosion during a fireworks display in La Paz, Abra on the third anniversary of the clash.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2018 in the Philippines” is overview of Philippines-related events during the year of 2018. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Philippines, overview and Philippines-related, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48799287. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018, 2011 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “2018 in the Philippines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.