This market splits the worldwide M7.0+ earthquake count for 2026 into discrete bands, from 5-7 quakes up to 20 or more, and traders price each as its own contract. The long-run USGS baseline sits near 15 major quakes a year, which anchors the contender bands clustered in the low-to-mid teens. The board carries roughly $1.1M in cumulative volume across six count bands and resolves to the USGS total on December 31, 2026. The live board above ranks the current cross-platform prices on every band.
Most years deliver between 10 and 17 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or higher somewhere on Earth, and this market turns that long-run count into a row of tradeable bands. Rather than a single yes/no, the board lists six discrete buckets covering 5-7, 8-10, 11-13, 14-16, 17-19, and 20 or more quakes for the full 2026 calendar year. The United States Geological Survey is the count of record, and the bands nearest the historical average carry the bulk of the implied probability. The live board above shows where each band trades right now.
The market is a multi-outcome ladder. Each band is an independent contract that pays out only if the final USGS tally lands inside its range, so the six bands compete for one outcome and their prices read as a probability distribution across the year-end count. The middle bands (11-13 and 14-16) sit closest to the climatological mean and trade as the chalk, while the tails (5-7 on the low end, 20 or more on the high end) trade as long shots.
The long-run reference point is roughly 15 M7.0+ events per year worldwide, a figure the USGS publishes from its global catalog. That average is remarkably stable across decades because plate-boundary seismicity is a planetary-scale process that does not track any single fault or season. What varies year to year is clustering. A single great earthquake (M8.0+) often triggers a sequence of large aftershocks that can each clear the 7.0 threshold, so one major rupture in a subduction zone can push a quiet year into a higher band within weeks. That clustering risk is what keeps the upper bands from collapsing to zero even when the year starts slow.
The contender set is the six bands themselves, and their relative pricing is the whole story. The bands centered on the historical average absorb most of the volume because the count almost always lands in the low-to-mid teens. The 14-16 and 11-13 buckets straddle the mean and trade as the front-runners on the board above.
The 17-19 band is the live upper-middle outcome. It needs an active year, the kind where a couple of M8-class ruptures generate aftershock sequences that each register above 7.0. The 8-10 band is the mirror image on the low side, a genuinely quiet year with no major triggering events. The two tails, 5-7 and 20 or more, are the lottery tickets: 5-7 would be one of the calmest years in the modern catalog, and 20 or more would require a clustering year well above the long-run norm. As the calendar fills in, the running USGS count compresses the plausible bands, and probability migrates toward whichever bucket the year-to-date total is tracking.
The market resolves to the total number of M7.0+ earthquakes recorded worldwide between January 1 and December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET, as counted by the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program. The band containing that final total pays out; every other band resolves to zero. If a qualifying earthquake occurs inside the window but has not yet appeared on the USGS feed, the market can stay open until January 7, 2027 to let the catalog finalize, with a credible backup source used only if USGS has not posted by then.
This market is part of a broader set of natural-hazard count contracts. Traders watching the seismic year often pair it with the worldwide VEI-4 volcano count 2026 odds, another USGS-style count market on a different geophysical process, and with the longer-dated worldwide M10.0+ earthquake threshold 2027 odds for a binary view on an extreme outlier. For the full slate of natural-event contracts, see the weather prediction markets hub. Page curation and reviews are handled by Genius Staff.
Resolves to the band containing the total number of earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or higher recorded anywhere on Earth between January 1 and December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET, as counted by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earthquake Hazards Program. The band that contains the final total pays $1 per share; all other bands resolve to zero. If a qualifying earthquake occurs within the window but has not yet appeared on the USGS resolution source, the market may stay open until January 7, 2027, 11:59 PM ET, or until that earthquake appears. If USGS has not posted by that date, another credible resolution source is used.
The market prices six count bands from 5-7 up to 20 or more M7.0+ earthquakes. The bands nearest the long-run USGS average of about 15 per year, the 11-13 and 14-16 buckets, trade as the favorites. See the live board above for current prices across all six bands.
It resolves to the USGS total for January 1 through December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. If a qualifying late-year quake has not yet posted, the market can stay open until January 7, 2027 for the catalog to finalize.
The six count bands are listed on Polymarket, with roughly $1.1M in cumulative volume across the board. Current per-band prices are shown on the live board above.
The bands straddling the historical mean, 11-13 and 14-16, carry the most implied probability because the worldwide M7.0+ count almost always lands in the low-to-mid teens. The 17-19 band stays live as the upper-middle outcome in an active year.
Track the running USGS year-to-date count and any M8.0+ ruptures, since one great earthquake can trigger several M7.0+ aftershocks and shift the count into a higher band within weeks.