Earthquakes of Magnitude 7 or Greater per Year 2000-2025
About This Dataset
Earthquakes of Magnitude 7 or Greater per Year 2000-2025
What this chart shows: the number of earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater recorded worldwide in each year from 2000 to 2025, counted from the U.S. Geological Survey's catalogue.
How the data is collected: the counts come from a search of the ANSS Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog (ComCat) for events of magnitude 7.0 or more between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2025, grouped by year in UTC. Only events classified as earthquakes are counted, using the magnitude USGS considers official for each.
Background: ComCat is a combined catalogue: each event lists the seismic networks that contributed to it, and a status showing whether it was posted automatically or reviewed by a human. All 387 of the 387 earthquakes counted here have the status "reviewed".
Limits: an earthquake at magnitude 6.9 is not counted even though it is almost the same size as a 7.0, so small changes in magnitude estimates can move events in or out of a year's count. Aftershocks are counted as separate events. The catalogue can be revised; these counts reflect it as of September 2026.
How the data is collected: the counts come from a search of the ANSS Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog (ComCat) for events of magnitude 7.0 or more between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2025, grouped by year in UTC. Only events classified as earthquakes are counted, using the magnitude USGS considers official for each.
Background: ComCat is a combined catalogue: each event lists the seismic networks that contributed to it, and a status showing whether it was posted automatically or reviewed by a human. All 387 of the 387 earthquakes counted here have the status "reviewed".
Limits: an earthquake at magnitude 6.9 is not counted even though it is almost the same size as a 7.0, so small changes in magnitude estimates can move events in or out of a year's count. Aftershocks are counted as separate events. The catalogue can be revised; these counts reflect it as of September 2026.
Analysis
There were 387 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater between 2000 and 2025, an average of 14.9 a year. The busiest year was 2010, with 24, and the quietest was 2017, with 7. 2025 had 16, above the 26-year average and up from 10 in 2024. 7 years reached 18 or more (2007, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2021, 2023), while 4 had 10 or fewer (2017, 2019, 2020, 2024).
Key Findings
📈
From 2000 to 2025, Number of magnitude 7.0+ earthquakes worldwide moved from 15 to 16 (+6.7%).
🏆
The highest value in Number of magnitude 7.0+ earthquakes worldwide came in 2010: 24.
🔻
The lowest was 2017 at 7.
↔️
The sharpest single-year move was 2017 → 2018: +142.9% (7 → 17).
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- U.S. Geological Survey, ANSS Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog (ComCat)
- Coverage
- 26 entities · 2000-2025 · 26 observations
- Measure
- Number of magnitude 7.0+ earthquakes worldwide
- Last updated
- 16 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
An article using this data
The Biggest Earthquake of 2025 Was Magnitude 8.8. It Was Not the Most Significant.
USGS ranks earthquakes three different ways: by magnitude, by a significance score that includes impact, and by how many people report feeling them. For 2025 th...
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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