M8.7 Earthquake near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia — 29 July 2025

Great earthquakes are among the largest events ever recorded and can devastate areas hundreds of kilometres across. Offshore events of this size are the primary cause of destructive ocean-wide tsunamis.

A magnitude 8.7 earthquake radiates roughly 169.2 million tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 2017, which meets the USGS threshold of more than 600 for its significant-earthquake list. The ranking combines magnitude with available Did You Feel It responses and PAGER alert level; it is not a direct measurement of damage.

That is about 10:05 local solar time at the epicentre, during the morning.

This event was shallower than 53% of the 1,906 earthquakes recorded in Russia in our catalogue and stronger than 100% of them.

The epicentre was located at 52.5097, 160.2610 — 126 km east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake 35 km northeast of here on 20 June 2026.

The nearest other settlements in our records are Mil’kovo (166 km north-northwest), Ozernovskiy (222 km south) and Atlasovo (228 km north-northeast).

At 18 km this was a shallow earthquake. Shallow events release their energy close to the surface, so for a given magnitude they produce noticeably stronger shaking — and more damage — than deeper ones. Roughly three quarters of all earthquakes worldwide occur at shallow depths.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size can produce strong, widely felt shaking. Its shallow focus makes stronger surface shaking more likely than for a deeper event of the same magnitude.

The USGS event record links to NOAA tsunami information because this was a large event in an oceanic region. That link flag does not mean a tsunami occurred or that a warning is active. Check tsunami.gov and instructions from your local authority for the current status of your coastline.

260 further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre in the seven days after this event, the largest of them magnitude 8.0.

1235 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 8.0 event near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on 29 July 2025. This M8.7 event released about 11 times more energy than that event.

178 earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, 165 of them in the past 30 days.

This earthquake is part of the July 2025 worldwide record, and of earthquakes in Russia during July 2025. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.