Earthquake Archive
163,934 earthquakes recorded worldwide across 21 months. Every month has its own page with the full event list, the largest event, the depth profile and the countries most affected. This page is the overview: what a normal month looks like, which months were not normal, and why the totals move around as much as they do.
Browse earthquakes by month
Click any column header to re-sort — by event count, or by the largest event of that month.
| Period | Events recorded | Strongest | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earthquakes in August 2026 | 192 | M5.6 | View |
| Earthquakes in July 2026 | 8,752 | M7.4 | View |
| Earthquakes in June 2026 | 8,696 | M7.8 | View |
| Earthquakes in May 2026 | 9,058 | M6.9 | View |
| Earthquakes in April 2026 | 9,611 | M7.8 | View |
| Earthquakes in March 2026 | 9,803 | M7.5 | View |
| Earthquakes in February 2026 | 7,278 | M7.1 | View |
| Earthquakes in January 2026 | 8,848 | M6.7 | View |
| Earthquakes in December 2025 | 7,837 | M7.6 | View |
| Earthquakes in November 2025 | 7,283 | M6.8 | View |
| Earthquakes in October 2025 | 7,451 | M7.6 | View |
| Earthquakes in September 2025 | 8,103 | M7.8 | View |
| Earthquakes in August 2025 | 8,539 | M8.0 | View |
| Earthquakes in July 2025 | 9,913 | M8.7 | View |
| Earthquakes in June 2025 | 8,578 | M6.6 | View |
| Earthquakes in May 2025 | 7,783 | M7.5 | View |
| Earthquakes in April 2025 | 8,394 | M7.2 | View |
| Earthquakes in March 2025 | 8,258 | M7.7 | View |
| Earthquakes in February 2025 | 7,575 | M7.6 | View |
| Earthquakes in January 2025 | 7,516 | M7.0 | View |
| Earthquakes in December 2024 | 4,466 | M7.3 | View |
What a normal month looks like
Across 19 complete months the catalogue averages 8,383 located earthquakes per month. The average magnitude is 1.7 and the average focal depth 20 km — which tells you most of what you need to know about a global catalogue: the overwhelming majority of these events are small, shallow, and never felt by anyone.
The busiest month on record was July 2025 with 9,913 events; the quietest was February 2026 with 7,278 — a spread of 36%. Over the same period 3460 events reached magnitude 5 or above.
Why monthly totals move around
A spike in a monthly total almost never means the planet became more seismically active. It usually means one large earthquake happened and dragged a long aftershock sequence behind it. A single magnitude 7 event can add hundreds of catalogued aftershocks over the following weeks, all clustered in one small area.
The second driver is instrumentation. As networks are upgraded and new stations come online, the catalogue's completeness threshold drops and more small events get recorded — the count rises without anything changing underground. See the magnitude scale for why the smallest events vastly outnumber the largest.
The figure that stays genuinely steady is the count of large earthquakes. The planet averages roughly 15 magnitude 7 or greater events a year, and that has been stable for as long as we have had instruments capable of counting it reliably. To judge whether a month was unusual, look at the magnitude 6-and-above count, not the total.
Largest earthquakes in the archive
- M8.7 near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia — 29 July 2025, 18 km deep
- M8.0 near Drake Passage — 22 August 2025, 10 km deep
- M8.0 near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia — 29 July 2025, 74 km deep
- M7.8 near Burias, Philippines — 07 June 2026, 35 km deep
- M7.8 near Ternate, Indonesia — 01 April 2026, 10 km deep