M4.9 earthquake near Palekastro, Greece

A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck 101 km (63 mi) south-southeast of Palekastro, Greece on Tuesday, November 3, 2026 at 11:03 UTC, at a depth of 46 km (28 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 Izmir, about 460 km (286 mi) away.
Why here?
This earthquake struck about 52 km (32 mi) from the boundary between the Eurasian and African 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 4.9 released roughly the energy of 338 tons of TNT. That is about 22 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 7,900,000 times more than this one.
Aftershocks
In the first 1 hour 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 35 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:
- M7.7 · 19 km SSE of Amorgós, GreeceJuly 9, 1956
- M7.3 · 15 km NNW of Karpathos, GreeceFebruary 9, 1948
- M7.0 · 5 km NNW of Kéfalos, GreeceJune 26, 1926
Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.
See every earthquake on November 3, 2026 or earthquakes by day.
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