Top 10 Volcanoes in Hawaii
The Hawaiian Islands are not a subduction-zone arc. They are the surface expression of a stationary mantle plume that the Pacific Plate is sliding across, north-west, at a few centimetres a year. The result is a chain of volcanoes that gets younger as you go south-east — and on the Big Island, two of them are still being built.
1. Kīlauea
The most active volcano on Earth in the modern record. The summit caldera at Halemaʻumaʻu has hosted lava lakes on and off since 2008, and the East Rift Zone destroyed the village of Leilani Estates in 2018. The crater overlook in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is the easiest way to see active volcanism anywhere on the planet.
2. Mauna Loa
By volume, the largest active volcano on Earth — its bulk reaches from the sea floor to 4,169 m. The 2022 summit eruption was the first since 1984, and the long northern rift zone has repeatedly threatened Hilo. Climbed from the saddle road as a brutal but doable long day.
3. Mauna Kea
A dormant shield, slightly higher than Mauna Loa, capped by the largest cluster of astronomical observatories in the world. Last erupted around 4,500 years ago. The summit access road is now subject to access agreements with the Native Hawaiian community.
4. Hualālai
The third active volcano of the Big Island, last erupting in 1801. Its lava flows from that eruption form the substrate of Kona International Airport and much of the western coastline north of Kailua.
5. Kohala
The oldest and most eroded of the Big Island shields, sculpted into the deep amphitheatre valleys of the Kohala coast — Waipiʻo, Pololū. The Kohala forest reserve preserves the wettest, greenest expression of Hawaiian volcanism.
6. Haleakalā (Maui)
The east Maui shield, rising to 3,055 m. Its summit crater is a 12-km landscape of cinder cones inside the older caldera — a moonscape sunrise that draws thousands at dawn. Last eruption was around 1500.
7. West Maui (Mauna Kahālāwai)
The deeply eroded shield that built western Maui. The ʻĪao Valley needle and the steep amphitheatres of West Maui are its eroded heart.
8. Lānaʻi
A small shield whose summit caldera collapsed into the Pacific. The Garden of the Gods landscape, all wind-eroded red boulders, is its surface today.
9. Molokaʻi (East and West)
Two shields joined by a younger lava plain. The 1,000-m sea cliffs of the north coast are among the highest in the world — the back wall of a vast volcano-flank collapse into the Pacific.
10. Loʻihi (Kamaʻehuakanaloa)
The newest Hawaiian volcano, still 1,000 m below sea level, off the south coast of the Big Island. In a few hundred thousand years it will rise above the Pacific as the next inhabited island. The name was changed in 2021 to its Hawaiian original.
How the chain reads
The Pacific Plate moves north-west at about 7 cm/year. Older islands (Kauaʻi, Niʻihau) are roughly 5 million years old, the Big Island around 0.4 million. The bend in the chain, around 47° N in the Emperor Seamount chain, dates to a plate-motion change about 47 million years ago.
Safety and access
Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park publishes daily volcano updates from the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Vog (volcanic smog) can reach the populated south-west coast even when nothing visible is happening. The 1990 destruction of Kalapana shows how fast lava can move when conditions align.
On the map
Open the map and filter to Hawaiʻi to see the chain unspool — the youngest, smoking centres in the south-east, the eroded forested shields trailing into the open Pacific.