2026 Pacific typhoon season

The 2026 Pacific typhoon season is an ongoing event in the annual cycle of tropical cyclone formation in the western Pacific Ocean. The season runs throughout 2026, although most tropical cyclones typically develop between May and October. The first named storm of the season, Nokaen, developed on January 15, marking the first named storm to form in January since Pabuk during the 2019 season, and the earliest start to a Pacific typhoon season since then. The season's first typhoon, Sinlaku, reached typhoon intensity on April 10 and, subsequently, the season's first super typhoon on April 12. Sinlaku affected the Northern Mariana Islands, causing extensive damage in Tinian and Saipan. Typhoon Bavi intensified into super typhoon on July 4 before making landfall on Rota at peak intensity, becoming one of the strongest typhoons on record for the Northern Mariana Islands. Concurrently, Tropical Storm Maysak caused devastating flooding in Southern China, resulting in 171 fatalities, 159 of them in Guangxi alone. Typhoon Dolphin was upgraded to a super typhoon on July 29, struck the Okinawa Islands on August 7, and later made landfall in China's Zhejiang province on August 9 near Wenzhou. The scope of this article is limited to the Pacific Ocean north of the equator between 100°E and the 180th meridian. Within the northwestern Pacific Ocean, two separate agencies assign names to tropical cyclones, which can result in a system having two names. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) names a tropical cyclone when it is estimated to have 10-minute sustained winds of at least 65 km/h (40 mph) anywhere in the basin. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) assigns names to tropical cyclones that move into or form as a tropical depression within the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR), defined as the area between 135°E and 115°E...