Singer Beyonce gives $1 million to Colombia after the Choco earthquake

Beyonce has committed $1 million of her own money to earthquake relief in Colombia, a fortnight after a 7.4-magnitude quake hit the Choco region on 10 August 2026. Rolling Stone and AllHipHop both reported the donation on 26 August, and a press release from Parkwood Entertainment said the money is earmarked for food and housing supplies in the areas hit hardest.

The scale of what it is going into is worth stating plainly. The Associated Press, citing central government figures, reported at least 312 people killed and 29,000 homes destroyed. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs put the number affected or displaced at around 69,000, roughly a tenth of Choco's entire population. The epicentre sat about three miles east of San Jose del Palmar, some 150 miles from Bogota, and the damage spread well beyond it, taking out roads and breaking the food supply chain so that money alone did not buy anyone anything.

The Parkwood release pointed people looking to help toward Food for the Poor and World Central Kitchen, both of which already had operations running in the region. That is the practical difference between a pledge and a delivery, and it is the shape her giving has taken repeatedly.

She was not the only artist to move. Shakira, who is Colombian, committed $1.25 million the previous week to rebuild ten schools and a university, assembled from $500,000 of her own alongside Live Nation, $500,000 from the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund and $250,000 from CAF, the development bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, routed through her Fundacion Pies Descalzos. "Every day that children don't go to school is a day they miss out on their future," she told journalists.

The Colombia money sits inside a busier run than usual. On 1 September her BeyGOOD Foundation gave $200,000 to Indiana flood relief, split between City Life Center in Gary and Angel by Nature, after storms dropped more than 11 inches of rain in parts of the state in two days, killed at least seven people and pushed damage estimates past $5 billion across more than 22,000 properties. Days later BeyGOOD put $2 million into the Studio Museum in Harlem.

The music industry's wider response to the same quake is covered in festivals joining the relief effort for Colombia, and Shakira's own Colombian benefit run in her Madrid residency dedicated to Latinos living in fear. More of the desk's pop coverage sits alongside.