The Constitution provides that Congress shall convene for its regular session every year beginning on the 4th Monday of July.

The substitutes, and first delegates for the Philippines were Pedro Pérez de Tagle and José Manuel Couto.

[7] By July 1810, Governor General Manuel González de Aguilar received the instruction to hold an election.

Restoration of Philippine representation to the Cortes was one of the grievances by the Ilustrados, the educated class during the late 19th century.

Proclaiming independence on June 12, 1898, President Emilio Aguinaldo then ordered the convening of a revolutionary congress at Malolos.

The revolutionaries, attempting to prevent American conquest, launched the Philippine–American War, but were defeated when Aguinaldo was captured in 1901.

The 1935 Constitution, aside from instituting the Commonwealth which gave the Filipinos more role in government, established a unicameral National Assembly.

But in 1940, through an amendment to the 1935 Constitution, a bicameral Congress of the Philippines consisting of a House of Representatives and a Senate was created.

The invading Japanese set up the Second Philippine Republic and convened its own National Assembly.

Successive Congresses were elected until President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 23, 1972.

It abolished the bicameral Congress and created a unicameral National Assembly, which would ultimately be known as the Batasang Pambansa in a semi-presidential system of government.

[4] Marcos was overthrown after the 1986 People Power Revolution; President Corazon Aquino then ruled by decree.

The Constitution was approved in a plebiscite the next year; it restored the presidential system of government together with a bicameral Congress of the Philippines.

[4] The two houses of Congress meet at different places in Metro Manila, the seat of government: the Senate meets at the GSIS Building, the main office of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) in Pasay, while the House of Representatives sits at the Batasang Pambansa Complex in Quezon City.

The Barasoain Church in Malolos, Bulacan served as a meeting place of unicameral congress of the First Philippine Republic.

With the Legislative Building destroyed during the Battle of Manila of 1945, the Commonwealth Congress convened at the Old Japanese Schoolhouse in Sampaloc.

Congress met at the school auditorium, with the Senate convening on evenings and the House of Representatives meeting every morning.

Marcos built a new seat of a unicameral parliament in Quezon City, which would eventually be the Batasang Pambansa Complex.

The House of Representatives inherited the Batasang Pambansa Complex, while the Senate returned to the Congress Building.

The vote requirements in the Congress of the Philippines are as follows: In most cases, such as the approval of bills, only a majority of members present is needed; on some cases such as the election of presiding officers, a majority of all members, including vacant seats, is needed.

In the Philippines, the most common way to illustrate the result in a Senate election is via a tally of candidates in descending order of votes.