A large-magnitude earthquake occurred on July 29, 2025, at 23:24 (UTC), off the southeast coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. Its moment magnitude Mw is 8.8.

This is the strongest earthquake since the Tohoku-Oki earthquake (off the coast of Japan) on March 9, 2011 (Mw=9.1), and the eighth strongest earthquake recorded by global seismological networks.

More info : Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center : CSEM/EMSC and U.S. Geological Survey : USGS.

The Figure below shows :

• Left : recordings of vertical ground movements (seismograms) caused by the earthquake at MACIV stations ; the colored bars show the arrival times of different seismic waves.
• Top right : map showing the location of the earthquake epicenter (yellow star), the MACIV network (blue dot), and the path of seismic waves between the source and stations (red curve).
• Bottom right : amplitudes of ground movement during the passage of the Rayleigh wave at seismological stations in mainland France (permanent stations and temporary MACIV stations), at the time indicated in red in the figure above ; in blue : station with negative amplitudes ; in red : station with positive amplitudes ; the red dotted line shows the direction of arrival of the waves.

The video below shows the vertical ground velocities caused at French seismological broadband stations (including MACIV’s temporary XP network) by the passage of seismic waves generated by the earthquake. Blue disc : the ground moves upward ; red disc : the ground moves downward. The red line shows the direction of arrival of the waves from the source region in Kamchatka (Russia). The undulations of the ground caused by the propagation of seismic waves are clearly visible. The fastest waves (known as P waves) reach France, 9,000 km away, nearly 12 minutes after the earthquake’s origin time, i.e. around 23:36 (UTC). The video shows that the ground vibrations caused by the passage of seismic waves last for more than 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Updated on 5 août 2025