In 2025, I recorded 663 global fatal landslides, costing 5,091 lives.
I have fallen a little behind with providing updates on global fatal landslides – a consequence of the pressures associated with changing jobs. I hope that normal service can now be resumed – I have been collecting the data through this period.
I am now able to provide a summary for global fatal landslides that occurred in 2025. As always, this will be subject to change as I analyse the data, but the broad headline will be correct. As a reminder, this data has been collected using the methodologies outlined in Froude and Petley (2018) and in Petley (2012). References are listed below – please cite these articles if you use this analysis.
So, in 2025, I recorded 663 fatal landslides (note that landslides triggered by earthquakes are not included in this analysis), costing 5,091 lives. The graph below provides the cumulative total of fatal landslides through the annual cycle, with the long term average and the exceptional year of 2024 included. This is plotted using pentads (5 day blocks) – there are 73 pentads in the year:-
As the graph shows, the number of global fatal landslides in 2025 was very considerably above the long term (2004 to 2016) average. It was not as high as 2024, but there is a caveat to that (see below). Right through to the end of the Northern Hemisphere summer the total was close to 2024, the number through the autumn was lower. Note that the big spike in the late summer 2024 was driven by a single, very well documented, rainfall event in Nepal.
An alternative way to view this data is by month, plotting simply the total number of global fatal landslides:-
The seasonal pattern is weaker than in most years. In particular there was an unusually high number of global fatal landslides in May and in October and November. The reasons for this needs further research.
I have a caveat for this analysis that I suspect I’ll be unable to resolve. Late in 2025, there were two multiple fatal landslide events that occurred very close together. The last is a very large rainfall event that occurred in November 2025 in Sumatra in Indonesia, triggered by Cyclone Senyar. Thousands of landslides were triggered, and current estimates are that at least 1,300 people were killed in the landslides and floods. I have tried to identify individual fatal landslides, but I have been unable to catalogue even a small proportion of them.
In late November, Sri Lanka was struck by very heavy rainfall associated with Cyclone Ditwah. Again, many landslides were triggered and there was extensive flooding. Over 800 people were killed. Again, I have been unable to identify the individual fatal landslides triggered in this event.
In summary, even without a full understanding of the events in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, 2025 was the second worst year for global fatal landslides in my dataset. There is strong evidence that the burden of landslides is continuing to increase.
References
Froude, M. and Petley, D.N. 2018. Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 18, 2161-2181.
Petley, D.N. 2012. Global patterns of loss of life from landslides. Geology 40 (10), 927-930.
Acknowledgement
Thanks as always to Planet Labs (2026) for their amazing imagery.
Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.
