M4.9 earthquake near Balangonan, Philippines

A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck 41 km (25 mi) southwest of Balangonan, Philippines on Friday, November 6, 2026 at 06:28 UTC, at a depth of 35 km (22 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 Davao, about 210 km (130 mi) away.
Why here?
This earthquake struck about 249 km (155 mi) from the boundary between the Philippine Sea 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 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 3 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 232 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:
- M8.3 · 1918 Mindanao, Philippines EarthquakeAugust 15, 1918
- M8.1 · 1924 Mindanao, Philippines EarthquakeApril 14, 1924
- M8.0 · 1972 Mindanao, Philippines EarthquakeDecember 2, 1972
Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.
See every earthquake on November 6, 2026 or earthquakes by day.
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