Short answer, checked every half hour and taken straight from the Icelandic search and rescue service rather than from social media. Below the live box: what a Reykjanes eruption actually affects, why it is nothing like the 2010 ash cloud, and whether any of it should change your plans.
Neither ICE-SAR nor the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program lists active Icelandic volcanic activity. Eruptions on the Reykjanes peninsula have started with only hours of warning before, so this is a status, not a forecast — but as of the timestamp above, nothing is under way.
Latest: September, 2026: Fimmvörðuháls hiking trail.
Sources: safetravel.is, run by ICE-SAR, the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue, and the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program weekly report. Checked every 30 minutes. In an emergency in Iceland, call 112.
Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart, and it averages an eruption every four or five years. Since 2021 that average has been concentrated in one place: the Reykjanes peninsula, the tongue of lava field between Keflavík Airport and Reykjavík.
The peninsula had been quiet for roughly 800 years. It woke up at Fagradalsfjall in March 2021 and has produced repeated fissure eruptions since, most of them near the Sundhnúkur crater row above the town of Grindavík. Volcanologists describe this as the start of a cycle that may run for decades, in episodes rather than continuously. Practically, that means: quiet for months, then a swarm of earthquakes, then a fissure opens within hours or days.
This is where most travel anxiety comes from, and most of it is misplaced. A Reykjanes fissure eruption is a very different event from Eyjafjallajökull in 2010:
| Reykjanes 2021 onwards | Eyjafjallajökull 2010 | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Fissure eruption, fluid basalt lava | Explosive eruption under a glacier |
| Ash | Essentially none | Vast ash plume into the jet stream |
| Flights | Keflavík has kept operating throughout | European airspace closed for days |
| Risk area | Local — a few kilometres, plus gas downwind | Continental |
What does get affected locally: the town of Grindavík, sections of the Reykjanes road network near an active fissure, and — the one most visitors care about — the Blue Lagoon, which sits close to the Svartsengi system and has closed at short notice several times. It reopens once authorities clear it.
Almost certainly not. Reykjavík is roughly 40 km from the active area and has never been under threat. The Ring Road, the south coast, the glacier lagoon, the north — all of it continues normally. Icelanders keep going to work. If your itinerary includes the Blue Lagoon, keep the booking flexible and have Sky Lagoon in Reykjavík or the Mývatn Nature Baths in the north as a fallback; that is the extent of the realistic disruption for most trips.
What is worth doing: buy travel insurance that covers natural events, book accommodation with free cancellation, and check the status box above rather than social media, where old eruption footage circulates as if it were current.
When a fissure is active and authorities permit access, three ways open up, usually within days:
Between eruptions there is still plenty to see: the cooled 2021–2024 lava fields are walkable, lava caves run year round, and Þríhnúkagígur near Reykjavík lowers you 120 metres into a dormant magma chamber — the only place on earth you can do that.
The only way to see an active fissure when the ground route is shut — and the best view even when it is open.
Check availabilityLands on a glacier and above the volcanic area — the longer flight, and the one people remember.
See datesRuns year round, eruption or not. Víðgelmir and Raufarhólshellir are the two set up for visitors.
Browse toursThese are affiliate links — see our disclosure. The price is the same either way.
For essentially all itineraries, yes. The exclusion zones are small and enforced, Reykjavík and the Ring Road are unaffected, and the country's entire tourism and emergency infrastructure is built around this happening. The practical risk to a visitor who obeys closures is very low.
Keflavík has stayed open through every Reykjanes eruption since 2021, because these produce lava rather than high ash plumes. An ash-producing eruption under a glacier — Katla or Grímsvötn — would be a different situation, but that is not what has been happening.
It has closed and reopened several times as fissures opened nearby. It is the single most likely part of a trip to be disrupted. Check their site before you drive out, keep the booking flexible, and have an alternative in mind.
Typically hours to a few days. The Met Office tracks earthquake swarms and ground deformation, and the pattern before recent Sundhnúkur eruptions has been an intense swarm followed by a fissure opening the same day. There is no long-range forecast.
It changes with the activity. The town was evacuated in late 2023 and access has switched between open, residents-only and closed several times since, depending on the state of the Sundhnúkur fissure system. Treat it as a place you check rather than assume: the current rule is always on safetravel.is, and the status box at the top of this page shows whether an alert is in force.
It has operated normally through every Reykjanes eruption since 2021 — these produce lava, not the high ash plumes that ground aircraft. The airport road (Route 41) runs well north of the active area. If an eruption starts while you are mid-trip, your flight will almost certainly leave on time; confirm with your airline rather than social media.
Not flowing lava, no — but you can walk the recent lava fields on Reykjanes, go inside lava tubes at Víðgelmir or Raufarhólshellir, and descend into the Þríhnúkagígur magma chamber in summer.