M5.0 earthquake near Ende, Indonesia

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck 45 km (28 mi) north-northwest of Ende, Indonesia on Monday, October 26, 2026 at 04:53 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 Makassar, Indonesia, about 437 km (272 mi) away.
Why here?
This earthquake struck about 240 km (149 mi) from the boundary between the Australian and Sunda plates. Most earthquakes happen along plate boundaries like this one, where the pieces of Earth’s outer shell collide, pull apart or grind past each other. Stress builds up over years until the rock suddenly slips.
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 5.0 released roughly the energy of 477 tons of TNT. That is about 32 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 5,600,000 times more than this one.
Earthquake history here
Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 72 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:
- M7.9 · 169 km NNE of Maumere, IndonesiaJune 17, 1996
- M7.8 · 66 km NNW of Ende, IndonesiaAugust 14, 2026
- M7.8 · 37 km WNW of Maumere, IndonesiaDecember 12, 1992
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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