Volcanoes in Europe: From Etna and Iceland to the Eifel

Overview: Europe’s key volcanoes

Heights and eruption years follow the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program; Etna’s height changes constantly with new eruptions and collapses.

Italy: Europe’s volcanic heartland

Mount Etna on Sicily is Europe’s largest and most active volcano (outside the Caucasus). It alternates quiet spells with paroxysms — short, violent episodes of lava fountaining and ash plumes. In 2026 these included lava flows in the Valle del Bove (January), an effusive eruption at the base of the North-East Crater (26 June – 4 July) and paroxysms from the Voragine crater on 30 July and 6 August, with an ash plume about 7 km high. In early October 2026 Etna was quiet. See volcano activity 2026.

Stromboli, north of Sicily, has erupted almost continuously for more than 2,000 years with small explosions every few minutes — the namesake of Strombolian eruptions. After the deadly explosion of 2019 and a large wildfire in 2022, access to the summit has been restricted; check the current rules before you go.

Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79 and last erupted in 1944. A few kilometres west lies Campi Flegrei, a large caldera beneath the town of Pozzuoli. Since 2005 the ground has been rising again (bradyseism) with increasingly strong earthquakes; on 31 July 2026 a magnitude 4.7 quake struck — the strongest in the area in about forty years. That does not mean an eruption is imminent, but authorities keep evacuation plans for hundreds of thousands of residents up to date. Ischia last erupted in 1302, and Vulcano gave us the word “volcano.”

Iceland: fire and ice

Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and above a hotspot, and has about thirty active volcanic systems; on average one erupts every few years.

• Reykjanes Peninsula: after roughly 800 quiet years a new volcanic period began in 2021: three eruptions at Fagradalsfjall (2021–2023), then nine fissure eruptions along the Sundhnúkur crater row near Grindavík (December 2023 – August 2025). The ground beneath Svartsengi is still rising; on 30 September 2026 the Icelandic Met Office (IMO) considered a new eruption the most likely scenario.
• Eyjafjallajökull (2010): a moderate eruption under a glacier whose ash shut down European airspace for days (about 100,000 cancelled flights).
• Grímsvötn: Iceland’s most active volcano, beneath Vatnajökull; a VEI 4 eruption in 2011.
• Hekla: erupted five times in the 20th century, most recently in 2000.
• Katla: beneath Mýrdalsjökull; last major eruption in 1918, notorious for glacial outburst floods (jökulhlaups).
• Laki (1783–84): a huge fissure eruption whose gases and the resulting famine killed about a fifth of Iceland’s population; the “Laki haze” spread across Europe.

Greece: Santorini and the Aegean arc

Santorini is the rim of a collapsed caldera. The Minoan eruption around 1600 BCE was one of the largest of the last 10,000 years and gave the island its crescent shape. The islets of Palea and Nea Kameni have grown in the caldera since; the last eruption was in 1950. In early 2025 an intense earthquake swarm between Santorini and Amorgos alarmed the region, without an eruption. Other Greek volcanoes include Nisyros (steam explosions, last in 1888), Methana and Milos.

Canary Islands and the Azores

The Canary Islands are hotspot volcanoes off the coast of Africa. Teide on Tenerife (3,715 m) is Spain’s highest mountain; the island’s most recent eruption was Chinyero in 1909. On La Palma the Tajogaite eruption of 2021 lasted 85 days (19 September – 13 December) and destroyed more than a thousand buildings. On Lanzarote the eruptions of 1730–1736 created the lava fields of Timanfaya National Park, and El Hierro had a submarine eruption in 2011–2012.

The Azores (Portugal) sit where three plates meet. Pico (2,351 m) is Portugal’s highest mountain, and the Capelinhos eruption on Faial (1957–1958) enlarged the island and triggered a wave of emigration.

France and Germany: sleeping volcanic fields

In the Auvergne lies the Chaîne des Puys, a chain of about 80 volcanoes around the Puy de Dôme (1,465 m), a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2018. Its youngest eruptions happened about 7,000 years ago. Overseas, France’s Piton de la Fournaise on Réunion is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

Germany’s Eifel is full of maars (explosion craters holding lakes) and cinder cones. About 13,000 years ago a large explosive eruption (VEI 6) formed the Laacher See; its ash is found as a thin layer as far away as Scandinavia and Italy. The youngest maar, the Ulmener Maar, is about 11,000 years old. Volcanic CO₂ still bubbles up in the Laacher See and seismologists see magma at great depth, so geologists regard the East and West Eifel as dormant rather than extinct. The Siebengebirge near Bonn, by contrast, is an extinct volcanic area about 25 million years old.

Are there volcanoes in the Netherlands or Belgium?

There are no active volcanoes in the European Netherlands or Belgium, but there are traces of very old ones:

• The Zuidwal volcano lies about 2 km beneath the Wadden Sea between Harlingen and Vlieland. It is roughly 150 million years old (Jurassic), was discovered by gas drilling, and is long extinct.
• Caribbean Netherlands: the Kingdom of the Netherlands does have two potentially active volcanoes. Mount Scenery on Saba (887 m, the highest point in the Kingdom) last erupted around 1640, with explosions and pyroclastic flows. The Quill on Sint Eustatius (601 m) last erupted roughly 1,600–1,800 years ago. Both are monitored by the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI.