Is the world experiencing more earthquakes now than before?
Al Jazeera examines a decade of USGS data showing that 2026 is tracking slightly above the historical average for magnitude-6+ earthquakes, but still within the normal range.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
After a deadly cluster of M7+ quakes struck Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines and Venezuela in 2026, Al Jazeera reviews USGS data and finds that the year is running modestly ahead of the 2016–2025 average of 133 magnitude-6+ events, not historically unusual.
The ground shakes because the Earth's outer shell is broken into giant puzzle pieces called tectonic plates that slowly bump and slide. Most quakes are tiny, but when big ones hit near cities, they can cause a lot of damage, which is why engineers study them to build safer buildings.
Analysis
The 91-magnitude-6 tally
By mid-August 2026, the world had recorded 91 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater, including 11 above magnitude 7, according to figures cited from the United States Geological Survey. That pace is slightly ahead of the 2016–2025 average of 133 such events per year, but it remains comfortably within the normal range. The previous decade swung from a low of 99 quakes in 2024 to a high of 157 in 2021, a 58-event spread that frames 2026's current count as unremarkable in statistical terms. None of the year's recorded events have reached magnitude 8 or 9, the categories historically responsible for the worst destruction.
The human toll, however, has been severe. A magnitude-7.8 quake off Mindanao in the Philippines killed more than 100 people, while Venezuela's back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 events in June killed more than 6,300. The pattern underlines a recurring point in seismology: lethality depends less on magnitude than on depth, proximity to populated areas, and the resilience of local construction. The deadliest quakes of the past decade were not the largest; they were the ones that ruptured beneath population centres.
Pacific Ring of Fire
About 90 percent of the world's earthquakes originate along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a 40,000-kilometre belt running from the western Americas through the Russian Far East and down to Southeast Asia and New Zealand. The Philippines, Japan, and Indonesia all sit within this zone, which is why 2026's largest events clustered in those regions. A second seismic corridor, the Alpide belt, stretches from Java through the Himalayas to Turkiye and the Mediterranean and accounts for roughly 17 percent of the world's largest quakes. Rare tremors also occur along ancient faults far from any plate boundary, a reminder that seismic risk is not confined to textbook subduction zones.
Earthquakes occur when tectonic plates, roughly 100km thick and perpetually in motion, lock at their edges and accumulate stress until the rock fails along fractures that can run for hundreds of kilometres. Many of these faults are well-mapped; others are discovered only when they rupture. The USGS notes that scientists have never been able to predict individual earthquakes because tectonic stress builds over decades or centuries and cannot be tied to a 12-month cycle, which is why the idea of an "earthquake season" does not exist in the scientific literature.
The 1960 Valdivia benchmark
The most powerful earthquake ever recorded struck Valdivia, Chile, on May 22, 1960, with a magnitude of 9.5 and generated a Pacific-wide tsunami. That event remains the upper limit of measured seismic energy release and provides the reference point against which all subsequent great earthquakes are compared. The moment magnitude scale used today is logarithmic: each whole-number increase represents about 10 times more ground shaking and roughly 32 times more energy released. A magnitude-7 quake therefore releases about 1,000 times more energy than a magnitude-5 event, a non-linear relationship that explains why even modest jumps in magnitude produce dramatically different damage profiles.
In place of prediction, seismologists calculate the probability that a large quake will hit a given area over a span of years, work that underpins modern building codes and early-warning systems. Those systems, once a quake has begun, can read a seismogram within minutes to determine the location, depth, and magnitude, and issue alerts before the strongest shaking reaches populated areas. The combination of long-term probabilistic assessment and real-time detection has become the practical backbone of earthquake risk management worldwide.
Key points
- The world records about 20,000 earthquakes per year, roughly 55 a day, most too weak to be felt.
- From 2016 to 2025, an average of 133 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater occurred annually, ranging from 99 in 2024 to 157 in 2021.
- By mid-August 2026, 91 magnitude-6+ earthquakes had been recorded, including 11 above magnitude 7, slightly ahead of the decade's pace but within the normal range.
- About 90 percent of the world's earthquakes occur along the Pacific Ring of Fire, with another 17 percent along the Alpide belt.
- The most powerful earthquake ever recorded was a magnitude-9.5 event near Valdivia, Chile, on May 22, 1960.
Continued investment in probabilistic seismic hazard mapping and ShakeAlert-style early-warning systems, as the article notes, can buy residents crucial seconds before strong shaking arrives, while stronger building codes informed by decade-long USGS records can sharply reduce casualties in future events.
With about 90 percent of the world's earthquakes concentrated along the Pacific Ring of Fire and roughly 17 percent along the Alpide belt, densely populated cities in these zones remain exposed to the next great quake, and the inability of scientists to predict individual events means communities can only prepare probabilistically, not in real time.
