M4.7 earthquake near Nagqu, China

A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck 170 km (106 mi) east-northeast of Nagqu, China on Sunday, October 25, 2026 at 22:01 UTC, at a depth of 10 km (6 mi), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Shallow quakes like this one shake the surface hardest. The nearest city of a million or more people is Xining, China, about 891 km (554 mi) away.
Why here?
This earthquake struck about 542 km (337 mi) from the nearest major plate boundary, which makes it an intraplate earthquake. These happen on old faults inside a plate, where stress from the plate’s slow movement is released. They are less common, but can surprise areas that rarely feel quakes.
The red lines on the map are plate boundaries.
How strong was it?
Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step releases about 32 times more energy. This magnitude 4.7 released roughly the energy of 169 tons of TNT. That is about 11 times the energy of a magnitude 4.0, a quake people nearby feel but that rarely causes damage. The strongest earthquake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960, released about 16,000,000 times more than this one.
Aftershocks
In the first 6 hours after it, USGS recorded no smaller earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or more within 100 km (62 mi).
Outside the United States, USGS mainly lists quakes of about magnitude 4 and up, so smaller aftershocks there are undercounted.
Earthquake history here
Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 16 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:
- M7.7 · 89 km WSW of Nagqu, ChinaNovember 18, 1951
- M7.4 · 101 km SSW of Nagqu, ChinaAugust 17, 1952
- M7.0 · 191 km ENE of Nagqu, ChinaOctober 22, 2026
Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.
See every earthquake on October 25, 2026 or earthquakes by day.
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