LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines – Five months into Mayon Volcano’s relentless eruption, the shelters across Albay province still smell like damp concrete and cooking smoke. Roughly 290,000 Filipinos remain displaced or directly affected, crowded into school gymnasiums, church halls, and government buildings while the volcano continues to push lava, ash, and sulfur dioxide into the sky without pause.
The eruption began in early January 2026, when the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) detected a sharp spike in seismic activity beneath the volcano’s cone and raised the alert level. Within days, incandescent lava was visible at the summit crater, and authorities ordered the evacuation of thousands of residents from high-risk zones on Mayon’s slopes. Chief volcanologist Teresito Bacolcol confirmed at the time that the activity constituted an active eruption requiring immediate protective action.
As of late May 2026, the volcano has not stopped. That makes the current episode at least 133 days long and, according to the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, the longest continuous eruptive run in Mayon’s recorded history, which stretches back to the early 1600s. Previous major eruptions, including deadly events in 1814, 1897, and 2018, lasted weeks to a few months, often broken by lulls. This one has offered no such reprieve.
A slow eruption with fast-moving dangers
PHIVOLCS classifies the current activity as effusive, meaning lava is being steadily extruded from the summit rather than blasted skyward in explosive bursts. The distinction matters, but it does not mean the eruption is safe. As fresh lava accumulates and cools on Mayon’s steep upper flanks, older deposits become unstable. In early May 2026, sections of those lava piles collapsed without warning, sending pyroclastic flows racing down drainage gullies and blanketing nearby communities in ash.
That escalation forced a new wave of evacuations. By mid-May, government briefings placed the number of directly affected residents near 200,000, a figure that has continued to climb as additional barangays fall within expanded hazard zones. The broader estimate of 290,000 includes people sheltering with relatives, families whose farms and livelihoods have been cut off, and communities dealing with persistent ashfall even outside the formal evacuation perimeter.
A PHIVOLCS daily bulletin dated May 12, 2026, and compiled by the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program, confirmed that Mayon’s alert level remained at 3, which the agency defines as “Increased Tendency Towards Hazardous Eruption.” That designation signals the possibility of a larger explosive event even while the current effusive phase grinds on.
What satellite data show
Ground-based monitoring is not the only system tracking Mayon. Satellite instruments operated by NASA and partner agencies have recorded elevated sulfur dioxide emissions and persistent thermal hot spots on the volcano’s upper slopes since January. Those orbital observations provide an independent check on PHIVOLCS measurements and confirm a consistent pattern: the magma supply feeding the eruption has not tapered off.
When thermal anomaly data from space align with seismic readings and visual reports from the ground, scientists gain higher confidence in their assessment. Right now, every data stream points in the same direction. Mayon is still actively erupting, and the lava keeps coming.
Five months in evacuation shelters
For the families living through this crisis, the numbers tell only part of the story. Evacuation centers designed for short-term use are now housing people who have been displaced since January. Overcrowding strains sanitation, food supply, and access to medical care. Children have missed months of regular schooling. Farmers who depend on the fertile volcanic soil around Mayon’s base have lost entire planting seasons, with no indication of when they will be allowed to return.
“We were told it would be a few weeks,” one evacuee at the Legazpi City National High School shelter said in mid-May 2026. “Five months later we are still here, and nobody can tell us when it will be safe to go back.”
The Department of Social Welfare and Development and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) have been coordinating relief, but neither agency has released a single consolidated displacement figure that reconciles the various counts circulating in government briefings and media reports. That gap makes it harder to assess whether aid is reaching everyone who needs it.
Local officials in Albay have called for sustained national and international attention, warning that donor fatigue is already setting in even as the eruption shows no sign of ending.
What volcanologists are watching next
An alert level of 3 means a hazardous eruption is considered possible within days or weeks, but it does not tell scientists whether Mayon is building toward a major explosive event or slowly winding down. The collapse of lava deposits in early May suggests the upper slopes are increasingly unstable, raising the risk of additional pyroclastic flows if larger sections of accumulated lava give way.
At the same time, there is no public evidence that magma supply rates are accelerating toward the kind of pressure buildup that precedes a catastrophic explosion. Monitoring instruments can detect shifts in gas emissions, ground deformation, and seismic tremor, but they cannot yet offer a precise forecast of when or how this eruptive phase will end.
For comparison, Mayon’s 2018 eruption lasted roughly two months before activity subsided enough for alert levels to be lowered. The 2009 eruption followed a similar pattern. Nothing in the modern record prepared authorities for an episode that would still be intensifying after more than four months.
Why the record claim requires a caveat
Describing this as the longest eruption in Mayon’s recorded history is supported by the available evidence, but it comes with an important qualification. Historical databases, including the Smithsonian’s comprehensive catalog, show that many of Mayon’s older eruptions were not monitored with the precision available today. The criteria PHIVOLCS uses to define the start and end of a single eruptive episode can also vary, and those detailed operational records are not fully public.
What can be said with confidence is that no eruption in Mayon’s documented past, spanning more than 50 recorded events since 1616, has been described as persisting continuously for this long without a clear pause. Whether future analysis refines that ranking, the scale and duration of the 2026 event are already exceptional.
290,000 people still waiting for an answer Mayon has not given
For the 290,000 people still waiting in shelters, gymnasiums, and relatives’ homes across Albay, the historical significance is secondary to a simpler question: when can they go home? Five months in, not PHIVOLCS, not local officials, not the scientists reading the satellite feeds, none of them has an answer.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
