Biggest Earthquakes of 2026 So Far: The Largest, the Deadliest and the US List (Mapped)

The year's earthquake record as of October 10, 2026: ranked by USGS magnitude, with every deadly quake, the largest in the United States, and what DisasterAWARE recorded for each one.

What is the biggest earthquake of 2026 so far? It is a tie: two magnitude 7.8 earthquakes, one off Mindanao in the southern Philippines on June 7 (June 8 local time) and one in the Flores Sea off Indonesia on August 14 (August 15 local time), according to the US Geological Survey. The deadliest, by a wide margin, was the Venezuela doublet of June 24, an M7.2 followed 32 seconds later by an M7.5 beneath the La Guaira coast: 6,509 people died. USGS reports the October 9 Panama earthquake as M7.7, the year's third-largest. Its PAGER model, a USGS estimate rather than a count, puts it on orange alert for economic losses ("0-1% GDP of Panama") and yellow for deaths ("Some casualties are possible"); Panama's civil protection agency, SINAPROC, reported no deaths and about 27 injured as of October 10. That makes 12 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater this year and 104 of magnitude 6 or greater, two of them Panama aftershocks. Below are the top 10 by magnitude, every deadly earthquake of 2026 in NOAA's significant-earthquake database, the largest in the US and its territories, and a map of them all.

How This List Is Built

• Magnitude is the USGS ComCat catalog's preferred magnitude (almost always moment magnitude, Mww), at the one decimal place USGS publishes. Earthquakes with the same magnitude share a rank and are listed by date. Other agencies can differ by a tenth or more: Japan's JMA put the Kumamoto earthquake at M7.1, while USGS has M6.8.
• Dates and times are UTC unless we say local time.
• Deaths come from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Significant Earthquake Database, which compiles official tolls.
• Shaking is the peak Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) in the USGS ShakeMap, a model built from seismic recordings and felt reports. It is a MODELED value, not a measurement at any one place.
• What DisasterAWARE recorded comes from our Historical Hazards archive. Those figures are ALERT values: the alert's severity, when the record was created, and the population inside the alert's footprint. Footprint population is everyone inside the alert area, not the number of people affected.

The 10 Biggest Earthquakes of 2026 So Far

Sources: USGS ComCat (magnitude, location, depth, ShakeMap peak MMI, PAGER alert), queried October 10, 2026; deaths from NOAA NCEI Significant Earthquake Database (Panama: SINAPROC). MMI is the ShakeMap peak, rounded to one decimal, with the nearest whole intensity in brackets. PAGER alerts are USGS model estimates of losses and deaths, not reported figures. Panama's ShakeMap and PAGER (version 10, as of October 12, 21:40 UTC) are still automatic and can change.

Two more earthquakes of M7 or greater this year fall just outside the top 10. One is the M7.2 first shock of the Venezuela doublet on June 24, 20 km E of San Felipe, Yaracuy (its deaths are in the doublet total). The other is an M7.1 on February 22, 57 km NNW of Kota Belud in Sabah, Malaysia. It was 629 km deep, so its peak shaking was only 4.6 (V), and no deaths or damage are listed for it. Over 2000–2025, the ComCat average for the same January 1–October 10 window is 11.6, and the full-year average is 14.9, so 2026 is running at a normal pace for large earthquakes. ComCat lists 105 entries of M6 or more (104 distinct earthquakes, because the May 9 Rat Islands quake is listed twice), a little below the 2000–2025 average of 115.6 entries for the same window.

Three things stand out:

• Magnitude did not predict the death toll. The two M7.8s killed 107 and 156 people. The Venezuela doublet, smaller in magnitude, killed 6,509. Its M7.5 began at shallow depth (about 20 km in the USGS finite-fault model) beneath a densely built coast, and USGS models it as one continuous rupture with the M7.2, running east toward Caracas and La Guaira.
• Depth matters as much as size. Tonga's M7.5 was 234 km deep and produced only moderate shaking. Colombia's M7.4 was 108 km deep, yet it still killed 335 people, and its ShakeMap peak was 8.2 (VIII); the insurance claims are concentrated in Risaralda and its capital, Pereira (see below).
• Two of the five largest came 17 days apart. The Mindanao M7.8 (June 7) and the Venezuela doublet (June 24) were on opposite sides of the world and unrelated.

The Deadliest Earthquakes of 2026

These are all the earthquakes of 2026 with deaths in NOAA NCEI's Significant Earthquake Database as of October 10: twelve in all, about 7,170 deaths combined. Ranking rule: deaths as listed by NCEI; ties share a rank.

Sources: NOAA NCEI Significant Earthquake Database (queried October 10, 2026); magnitudes from USGS ComCat. "—" means no figure in NCEI.

Death tolls are not final, and national tallies can differ from NCEI's. NCEI's 6,509 for Venezuela matches the government's last official balance, of August 24. For Flores, Indonesia's disaster agency BNPB reported 142 deaths as of September 15, 48 of them direct and 94 indirect (in evacuation camps); for Mindanao, NCEI's entry covers the Philippines and Indonesia. USGS event summaries also report deaths, one to five each, for 12 more earthquakes that NCEI has not listed yet; the largest of them is Qinghai's M6.3 of June 16, which killed one person in Da Qaidam.

Venezuela's doublet is by far the deadliest earthquake of 2026, and one of the deadliest in the Americas this century. An M7.2 started inland near San Felipe at 22:04:31 UTC (6:04 pm local time); 32 seconds later the M7.5 began about 20 km west of Catia La Mar. USGS's finite-fault model treats the two as one rupture, about 175 km long, that ran east beneath the coast as far as Caracas and La Guaira. We explain why it was so deadly in our deep-dive on the doublet.

The Biggest Earthquakes in the US in 2026

No US earthquake this year has reached M7. Every one of M6 or greater has been in Alaska's Aleutian Islands or far off the Oregon coast, away from towns. Ranking rule: ComCat preferred magnitude, US states and territories including their offshore waters.

Source: USGS ComCat, queried October 10, 2026. One more Aleutian earthquake, on May 9 in the Rat Islands, is listed twice in ComCat: as ML 6.1 by the Alaska Earthquake Center and as Mww 5.8 by the USGS National Earthquake Information Center, two seconds apart. They are the same earthquake, and we use the moment magnitude, M5.8, so it is not in this table.

The earthquakes that people actually felt hard were smaller and closer to home:

• Hawaii, May 23: M5.96, 13 km south of Honaunau-Napoopoo on the Big Island's Kona coast, 23 km deep. ShakeMap peak 7.4 (VII); USGS PAGER yellow. Apart from the Aleutian and offshore Oregon earthquakes in the table, it is the largest US earthquake of 2026.
• California, June 24: M5.6 (5.59), 11 km north of Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, 9 km deep. ShakeMap peak 7.4 (VII); PAGER yellow. It is the biggest earthquake in California this year; the next largest, M5.1 on June 3, was 62 km offshore of Petrolia.
• Alaska, January 1: M5.7, 111 km north of Yakutat, ShakeMap peak 6.8 (VII).
• Nevada, April 14: M5.7 (5.68), 20 km ESE of Silver Springs, ShakeMap peak 6.5 (VII).
• Texas, July 23: M5.0, 38 km SSE of Spearman in the Panhandle, ShakeMap peak 5.8 (VI).

For the all-time picture, see the largest earthquakes in US history.

Map: Every M6+ Earthquake of 2026, and the Shaking of the Deadliest

Each dot is an earthquake of M6 or greater from the USGS catalog, sized and coloured by magnitude: all 104 through October 10, including the Panama M7.7 and its M6.6 and M6.0 aftershocks. Purple dots are the four smaller earthquakes (below M6) with deaths in NCEI's database. For the five deadliest earthquakes, the coloured lines are USGS ShakeMap intensity contours, MMI V to VIII; zoom in on Venezuela, Colombia, Flores, Mindanao or Kumamoto to see them. Click any dot for its depth, PAGER alert, deaths and what DisasterAWARE recorded.

Open map full screen ↗

Explore the map: switch on more layers with the layers icon at the bottom right of the map: felt reports for 18 quakes, first-week aftershocks for 12 sequences, NOAA tsunami heights for 8 tsunamis, and USGS fault-slip and ground-failure models for 9 and 21 quakes. ShakeMap shading (MMI IV+) for 101 of the 108 quakes is on at load, stronger shaking on top; the dot popups add USGS's PAGER estimate. All are the latest versions published.

In the DisasterAWARE Archive: What We Recorded for Each Earthquake

The DisasterAWARE Historical Hazards archive holds 1,524 earthquake records that start in 2026 (pulled October 10, 2026; the latest starts on September 30, so the October 8 M6.3 off Vanuatu is not in it yet). The archive is alert-grain: one earthquake can carry several records. Mindanao has two records, Kumamoto three, and the March 4 Aleutian M6.4 two.

Also in the archive: Tonga M7.5 and Vanuatu M7.3, one Watch record each, created 10 and 9 minutes after the quake. Sources: DisasterAWARE Historical Hazards API and active hazards, queried 2026-10-10. "First record created" is the archive record's creation time minus the USGS origin time (ALERT). Shaking bands are the alert's own exposure levels.

Two things to take from this:

• The footprint is a screening number, not a casualty estimate. The off-Japan M7.4 footprint of 163 million people covers much of Japan, while the ShakeMap peak on land was only 6.0 (VI) and no one died. In Venezuela, 257,000 people were inside the "severe shaking (VIII) and above" band: that is the population that drives a loss estimate.
• Some records are not in the historical archive yet. The Colombia M7.4, the Venezuela M7.5 and the October 9 Panama M7.7 are still active hazards on the DisasterAWARE platform (Colombia's record was created 16 minutes after the quake, Panama's 7), and active hazards join the archive once they close. Until then the archive holds Colombia's tsunami statement and an M5.0 aftershock, and Venezuela's doublet impact sits on the M7.2's record. For Flores, the archive holds the Response Support record created August 17.

For Insurers and Reinsurers: Shaking, Not Magnitude, Drives the Claims

The 2026 losses published so far:

• Venezuela: the World Bank's rapid damage estimate (GRADE), released July 23, puts direct physical damage at US$19.6 billion: 47% in homes, 27% in infrastructure and 26% in non-residential buildings, with La Guaira state and the Capital District taking about half.
• Colombia: by September 11, insurers had received 84,534 claims, with an estimated COP 4.4 trillion needed to settle them (Fasecolda, the Colombian insurers' association, reported by La República on September 14). COP 3.8 trillion of that was under fire-and-earthquake policies (61,159 claims), with home policies a separate COP 437 billion; Risaralda accounted for COP 1.6 trillion and Pereira alone for COP 1.3 trillion. Payments made by then: COP 184.77 billion.
• Kumamoto, Japan: the General Insurance Association of Japan reported ¥23.78 billion paid on 30,838 residential earthquake claims as of August 28 (released September 17). By then insurers had logged 110,809 claims and enquiries, closed 36,514 of them and paid 30,838.

Why magnitude is a poor guide. The two biggest earthquakes of the year, both M7.8, together killed fewer than 300 people. Colombia's M7.4 was 108 km deep, yet Pereira, about 60 km east of the epicentre, carries the largest insured loss. Tonga's M7.5 at 234 km produced moderate shaking and no reported damage. What drives a claim is the intensity of shaking at the insured building, and that is what a ShakeMap estimates, location by location.

How event-level ShakeMap data is used for claims triage.

• Sorting claims by intensity. Overlay the MMI or PGA contours on the policy locations, then rank incoming claims by the shaking band they fall in. Adjusters go first to the MMI VIII+ band, where collapse and severe damage are likely; desk handling suits claims in the V–VI band.
• Spotting outliers. A large structural claim from a location the ShakeMap puts at MMI IV, far from the rupture, deserves a closer look.
• Tracking versions. USGS revises a ShakeMap as data arrive (Venezuela's M7.5 is at version 16). Knowing which version a decision used, and what changed, matters for reserving and for parametric triggers that settle on a published intensity or acceleration.
• Exposure by band, early. For most of this year's large earthquakes, the DisasterAWARE alert record was created 9 to 14 minutes after the quake, and the archived record holds the population and the replacement value of buildings and infrastructure, for most of them in each shaking band.

Historical Event Intelligence licenses the earthquake archive with each event's ShakeMap, PGA contours and exposure by shaking band. The free Chile 2015 earthquake sample shows the record format with no signup, and earthquake data describes every field.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the biggest earthquake of 2026 so far? Two earthquakes are tied at magnitude 7.8 on the USGS catalog: one off Mindanao in the Philippines on June 7, 2026 (June 8 local time), and one in the Flores Sea off Indonesia on August 14 (August 15 local time). This is as of October 10, 2026.

What was the deadliest earthquake of 2026? The Venezuela doublet of June 24, 2026: an M7.2 followed 32 seconds later by an M7.5 near the La Guaira coast. The official toll is 6,509 deaths, far more than every other earthquake this year combined. Colombia's M7.4 on August 10 is second, with 335 deaths.

How many magnitude 7 earthquakes have there been in 2026? Twelve, as of October 10, 2026, according to the USGS catalog, including the M7.7 in Panama on October 9. That is in line with the 2000–2025 average of 11.6 for the same part of the year; the full-year average over that period is 14.9. There have been 104 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or more.

What was the biggest earthquake in the US in 2026? An M6.5 in Alaska's Aleutian Islands on September 17, 177 km west of Nikolski and 98 km deep, far from any town. The strongest shaking near people was from an M5.96 off the Big Island of Hawaii on May 23 and an M5.6 near Redwood Valley, California, on June 24, the largest in California this year.

Related Reading

• Venezuela's June 2026 Earthquake Doublet: Why It Was So Deadly
• The Largest Earthquakes in US History
• Earthquake Data: ShakeMap, Intensity and Exposure
• Earthquake Risk in Los Angeles, CA
• Earthquake Risk in Honolulu, HI

Sources: USGS ComCat earthquake catalog, event pages, ShakeMap and PAGER products (queried October 10, 2026); for Panama casualties, SINAPROC as reported by La Estrella de Panamá and Infobae's state-of-emergency report (October 10, 2026); NOAA NCEI Significant Earthquake Database (queried October 10, 2026); USGS finite-fault model and event summary for the Venezuela M7.5 (us6000t7zp); BNPB via Sindonews, September 15 (Flores); USGS event summaries (impact text) for 2026 earthquakes; Venezuelan government balance of August 24, reported by EFE/20minutos; World Bank GRADE report on the Venezuela earthquakes (July 23, 2026); Fasecolda Comunicado No. 7 and La República (September 14, 2026); General Insurance Association of Japan (September 17, 2026); Pacific Tsunami Warning Center; DisasterAWARE Historical Hazards API and DisasterAWARE active hazards (queried October 10, 2026).