Somalia, since the overthrow of the military junta in 1991, is frequently referred to for its fragmented political and territorial dispensation. Since the total collapse of the state its evolution, over the last thirty years, has seen very distinct forms of sub-national state formation processes, some of which have persisted others of which have soon dissolved. The current Federal government, established in 2012, marked the beginning of a new period in these state formation processes, a response to the Islamist turn in Somalia, where an internationally sponsored state-building programme has led to the creation of new sub-national polities – as Federal Member States (FMS) – each with their own logic of statehood. This wider political-territorial condition has been described as a ‘disassembled patchwork of public authorities and political entrepreneurs’. In this paper, we explore the case of Jubbaland, which is neither a de facto state like Somaliland, an autonomous polity like Puntland, nor simply a vessel for central Somali patronage politics – and ask what it can tell us about state fragmentation.