M4.5 earthquake near Rasht, Tajikistan

A magnitude 4.5 earthquake struck 74 km (46 mi) southeast of Rasht, Tajikistan on Monday, October 26, 2026 at 18:07 UTC, at a depth of 47 km (29 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 Dushanbe, Tajikistan, about 200 km (124 mi) away.
Why here?
This earthquake struck about 499 km (310 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 4.5 released roughly the energy of 85 tons of TNT. That is about 5.6 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 32,000,000 times more than this one.
Earthquake history here
Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 131 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:
- M7.8 · 71 km SSW of Jurm, AfghanistanNovember 15, 1921
- M7.7 · 52 km ESE of Farkhār, AfghanistanJuly 7, 1909
- M7.5 · 35 km SSW of Jurm, AfghanistanMarch 4, 1949
Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.
See every earthquake on October 26, 2026 or earthquakes by day.
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