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The 10 Countries That Have the Most Volcanoes on Earth |
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The Smithsonian keeps the world’s master list of volcanoes. Its August update counts 1,214 that have erupted in the past 11,700 years. The country with the most is not Indonesia, and it is not Japan. It is the United States, with 165. Half of them are in Alaska. |
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Source: Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, Volcanoes of the World v5.4.0 (7 Aug 2026). Holocene volcanoes by country; shared border volcanoes count for each country. |
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| What's Surprising |
The United States has 165 volcanoes, more than any other country on Earth. Alaska holds 83 of them, just over half. Another 25 sit in the Mariana Islands, US territory in the western Pacific, and 15 of those are under the sea. The Cascade Range, from Washington to California, adds 21. Hawaii, the place most people picture, has six.
Russia’s 106 are almost all in the Far East: 56 in the Kuril Islands, 46 on Kamchatka. Its highest mountain is a volcano too. Elbrus, at 5,642 metres the tallest peak in Europe, last erupted around 50 CE. Japan’s Mount Fuji is on the list, quiet since 1707.
Ethiopia is the other surprise. It has no coastline and 49 volcanoes, more than Iceland and Italy combined. Hayli Gubbi, in the Afar desert, had no eruption anyone had ever recorded. On 23 November 2025 it blew out a new summit crater. Its ash cancelled flights in New Delhi.
| What's Not Surprising |
Eight of the ten sit on the Pacific Ring of Fire, the loop of plate boundaries around the Pacific Ocean. There, one plate dives beneath another and feeds magma to the surface. Chile and Argentina share the Andes, and 18 volcanoes sit on the border between them. Iceland and Ethiopia are the exceptions. Both sit where the Earth’s crust is being pulled apart.
A big count is not the same as a busy one. Indonesia has 101 volcanoes, and 40 of them have erupted since 2000. The United States has 165, and 25. Canada has 24, and none has erupted since 1900. The US Geological Survey puts America third for historically active volcanoes, behind Indonesia and Japan. Italy, home of Vesuvius and Etna, has 13 in all.
Counting volcanoes is harder than it sounds. Japan and Russia both count 11 volcanoes in the southern Kuril Islands, which Russia runs and Japan claims. Take them out and Indonesia moves up to third. Indonesia’s own geological agency counts 127 active volcanoes, not 101. We use one ruler for every country: the Smithsonian’s.
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83 Volcanoes in Alaska, just over half of America’s total. The Aleutian Islands alone have 46, more than Iceland’s 35. |
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231 Volcanoes worldwide that have erupted since 2000, out of 1,214 on the Smithsonian’s list. Fewer than one in five. |
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6,879 m Ojos del Salado, on the Chile–Argentina border, the highest volcano on the Smithsonian’s list. Argentina makes the top ten on shared peaks: 18 of its 32 straddle that border. |
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54 Lava-fountain episodes at Kilauea, Hawaii, between December 2024 and 25 August 2026, the most the USGS has recorded for a single eruption there. |
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11 Kuril Island volcanoes counted by both Japan and Russia. Russia runs the islands. Japan claims them. Remove them from both totals and Indonesia ranks third. |
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The Smithsonian reviews each year’s eruptions the following summer, so its verdict on 2026 should land around July 2027. Four places to track. Kilauea, which had run 54 fountaining episodes by late August. Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula, which has erupted again and again since 2021. Kamchatka, where Krasheninnikov woke in August 2025 for the first time in centuries, days after a magnitude 8.8 earthquake. And Ethiopia’s Afar, where Hayli Gubbi blew in November 2025. The ranking moves slowly. The activity does not. We’ll be watching. |
