Stellaris – How to Create Sectors

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Around the start of the midgame, your empire will have grown a lot in size. You will now be managing multiple fleets, armies, planets, space stations, and neighbors.

Victory in Stellaris often goes to the empire that can exploit the most resources from the assets available to them. One of the best ways to maximize your production is by splitting your planets into sectors.

Recommended Read: How to Form a Federation in Stellaris

Sectors are powerful because they allow you to assign a governor to them. Governors apply bonuses to all planets in that sector and can even auto-manage it if you want them to.

You create a sector in Stellaris by assigning a planet as a sector capital. Once assigned, all planets within four hyperlane jumps will become members of that sector.


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How to Create Sectors in Stellaris

Making a sector in Stellaris is easy. It will only take a few button clicks, and the game will do the rest of the work for you.

Sectors only become relevant for larger empires, though. If you are playing tall with only 2-3 planets that are close to each other, you won’t need to worry about making sectors.

The planet you start with is a sector and comes with all the benefits created sectors get. You can use the early game to familiarise yourself with the sector mechanics.

When you begin colonizing worlds more than four hyperlane jumps away from your home planet, you can start making your own sectors.

Your first decision when making your sector should be picking the sector capital. Unlike your empire capital, the planet receives no bonus for being a sector capital.

The only benefits it will get are the ones that come from the assigned governor.

When you are ready to form a sector, go ahead and open the planet interface menu of the one you want to be the capital. In the center of the planet summary tab are the sector management buttons.

If the planet is already in a sector, the name of the sector capital will be displayed here. If not in a sector, it will say “No Sector.” The buttons next to this are how you can create, delete, or edit your sectors.

Creating the sector is only a button press away now. Click the button with a plus symbol on it labeled “Create new sector” in the games tooltip.

As easy as that, you now have a new sector in your empire. The game will auto-assign any planets not already in a sector that are within four hyperlane jumps to the new sector.


How to Assign a Governor to a Sector

The greatest strength of sectors is the governor’s bonuses. Governors are leaders in your empire that can be assigned to sectors to apply various bonuses. The bonuses applied to the sector are determined by the governor’s traits.

There are far too many traits to list in this guide, so I will leave you to discover them on your own. Be sure to read the in-game tooltips to understand what bonuses the traits will apply to your sectors.

There are two ways to assign a governor to a sector, and they are both as simple as each other.

The first is opening the planet interface on any of the planets in the sector you want to assign a governor to. Click the plus icon on the top left where it says no governor assigned. A list of potential governors will appear, and you pick the one you want.

The second method is the exact same process, but you click on the sectors and planets menu, found on the left-hand side of the interface. The shortcut for this menu is F7. All of your sectors will be listed, and you click the assign governor button and assign one from the pool available to you.


This is everything you need to know about creating sectors in Stellaris!

Experimenting with governor traits is a fun and easy way to maximize your empire’s production potential. You can even have the governors run the sectors for you.

They will create buildings and districts on the planet for you by using a pool of resources that you can designate for governors to use.

The AI is known to make some wonky decisions when left to their own devices for too long. It would be a good decision to check on what they have built every couple of years and edit accordingly

If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. Have fun creating sectors in Stellaris.

Simon Neve

Simon lives in Northern Ireland with his wife and two children. When not caring for his family, Simon enjoys video games, board games, and tabletop roleplaying games. When playing isn't an option he writes about them instead.

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