France Earthquake Trends: Moderate Shaking, Antilles at Risk

Guadeloupe seen from the International Space Station
Guadeloupe seen from the International Space Station in 2005. The French Antilles sit in France’s highest seismic zone. Photo: NASA, ISS Expedition 12 crew via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Rare but damagingUpdated 20 October 2026

Trend summary

  • Mainland France has moderate seismicity: about one highly destructive earthquake and four seriously damaging ones per century, according to BRGM. The deadliest of the 20th century, at Lambesc in Provence in 1909, killed about fifty people.
  • The Le Teil earthquake of 11 November 2019 (Mw 4.9) was small but unusually shallow, at about 1–3 km. It cracked hundreds of buildings in the Rhône valley, injured four people and led to more than 1,000 people being rehoused.
  • The French Antilles (Guadeloupe and Martinique) face the highest hazard, rated zone 5. The 1843 Guadeloupe earthquake killed more than 1,500 people. Since 2007 the Plan Séisme Antilles has spent about €1.08 billion (2007–2019) on schools, fire stations, hospitals and social housing.
  • Off Mayotte, a seismic swarm that began on 10 May 2018 produced 2,047 located earthquakes of magnitude 3.5 or more by January 2021 and built a new submarine volcano, the largest active submarine eruption ever documented.
Mw 4.9Le Teil quake, ~1–3 km deep, 2019
~21,000communes under seismic building rules (zones 2–5), since 2011
2,047Mayotte quakes of M3.5+, May 2018–Jan 2021
€1.08bnPlan Séisme Antilles spending, 2007–2019

What the numbers show

France does not publish a single yearly earthquake count; its seismic monitoring is shared between BCSF-RéNaSS (Strasbourg), CEA and the volcano observatories of IPGP. History sets the scale. BRGM’s SisFrance database, which covers about a thousand years, shows roughly one highly destructive and four seriously damaging earthquakes per century in mainland France (BRGM). The Provence earthquake of 11 June 1909 at Lambesc killed about fifty people; in the Antilles, the 8 February 1843 earthquake killed more than 1,500 people and the 11 January 1839 Martinique earthquake several hundred; the Les Saintes earthquake of 21 November 2004 (M6.3) killed one person (Géorisques). Since 1 May 2011 a five-zone map, set by decrees of 22 October 2010, applies seismic building rules in zones 2 to 5, which cover about 21,000 communes, up from just over 5,000 under the old map (Maire-info/AMF; Géorisques). All of Guadeloupe and Martinique sit in zone 5.

The Le Teil earthquake of 11 November 2019 (Mw 4.9; local magnitude 5.4 by CEA) reached intensity VIII in parts of Le Teil (Comptes Rendus Géoscience). IRSN reported four injured, about 50 cracked buildings in Le Teil and Saint-Thomé in the first days, and checks at the Cruas nuclear plant about 12 km away, with no damage found (IRSN). By 22 November more than 1,000 people had been rehoused and more than 1,750 building checks carried out (Banque des Territoires). In June 2023 the La Laigne earthquake (Charente-Maritime, Mw 4.8–4.9) damaged 135 homes in a village of about 500 people and 170 people had to be rehoused (CEA). Off Mayotte, REVOSIMA counted 2,047 located earthquakes of magnitude 3.5 or more between 10 May 2018 and 31 January 2021, the largest Mw 5.9 on 15 May 2018; the island sank by about 10–19 cm and moved 21–25 cm east (REVOSIMA bulletin 26).

What is driving it

Most French earthquakes are small, but shallow ones do outsized damage. Field, seismic and satellite (InSAR) data show the Le Teil rupture reactivated the old La Rouvière fault, broke the surface along about 5 km and lifted the ground by up to 15 cm; the fault showed no clear sign of having moved for thousands of years (Ritz et al., 2020, Communications Earth & Environment). Modelling suggests ground acceleration near the fault locally exceeded gravity, far above what is usual for a quake of that size (Causse et al., 2021). Old masonry was the weak point at Le Teil: the few buildings that collapsed there and in Viviers were among the oldest, 19th-century ones (Cornou et al., 2021). In Mayotte the cause is volcanic: deep magma reservoirs (below 55 km) drained through dykes and built an 820 m-tall, ~5 km³ volcano on the sea floor by May 2019 (Feuillet et al., 2021, Nature Geoscience).

Policy has focused on buildings rather than prediction. The 2011 zoning brought about 21,000 communes under construction rules (Maire-info/AMF). In the Antilles, the Plan Séisme Antilles began in 2007; its first phase (2007–2013) invested or programmed more than €2.4 billion including housing and hospitals, but only 30 of 100 planned primary schools were completed (Plan Séisme Antilles, 2016). The third phase (2021–2027) aims to protect, for example, 66.4% of primary pupils in Martinique and 54.1% in Guadeloupe by 2027, and puts the cost of retrofitting private buildings at €5–6 billion (PSA3 framework, 2021). The Senate warned in 2018 that overseas territories face an “emergency” on natural risks (Senate), and Mayotte’s monitoring network, REVOSIMA, received €3.7 million of state funding in 2023 (Mayotte Hebdo).

Recent cases

  • 16 May 2026: A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck north-north-east of Anse-Bertrand, Guadeloupe, at a depth of 57 km. BCSF-RéNaSS collected 131 felt reports, with a highest preliminary intensity of 5 at Baie-Mahault; no damage was listed (BCSF-RéNaSS).
  • 2 January 2026: A magnitude 5.7 earthquake, 32 km deep and about 59 km north-east of Trinité, shook Martinique. The OVSM observatory estimated intensity V near the coast and locally VI–VII depending on soil (IPGP-OVSM).
  • 27 October 2025: A magnitude 6.6 earthquake about 168 km east of La Désirade was widely felt across Guadeloupe at intensity IV–V, locally up to VI, according to the OVSG observatory (IPGP-OVSG).

Press releases and official reports, 2023–2026

Five key releases a year for the last four years, newest first. Most come from national bodies such as ONISR, the Ministry of the Interior, Santé publique France, the BEA and BEAmer investigation bureaus and the Banque de France, from the Senate and National Assembly, and from research journals; a few news reports are included where they are the clearest public record of an event. Headlines are our English translations of the French originals. Releases from 2007–2022 are in the expandable list after 2023.

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View 20 years of major French earthquake press releases (2007–2026)65 more from 2007–2022, up to five a year, newest first

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2011

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Many years list fewer than five items, and some have none yet. Several official archives (Légifrance, older ministry pages and PDFs) could not be opened when we compiled this list, and we only list items we could open and check. We are still adding to these lists. Where a page shows no date, the date comes from the publisher’s own index; annual reports with no printed date are listed under the year they cover or were released.

Photo list

3D model of the seabed east of Mayotte
Ifremer 3D model of the seabed east of Mayotte, where a new submarine volcano formed during the 2018–19 seismic crisis. Photo: Ifremer via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
The bridge over the Rhône at Le Teil, Ardèche
File photo: the bridge over the Rhône at Le Teil (Ardèche), the town hit hardest by the November 2019 earthquake. Photo taken in 2009. Photo: Vpe via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Related on ROR Labs

How this page is built. Figures come from the official statistical releases and research linked above; where agencies publish provisional numbers we say so, because they are revised. National death data come from Inserm’s cause-of-death centre (CépiDc) and take two to three years to finalise, and some figures cover metropolitan France only while others include the overseas departments, so we say which year, area and source each figure covers. Money is given in euros. Headlines and quotes are our translations from French. Photos are public-domain or Creative Commons images credited in each caption; file photos are illustrative and are not from the events described unless the caption says so. This page tracks trends and is not personal safety, medical, legal or financial advice.