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JP · 2025 yearbook

Wildfires in Japan in 2025

24 fires larger than 200 hectares in Japan in 2025, with 16,366 hectares burned according to their perimeters. Here is the whole year: what the official record says, when and where it burned and what the weather was like.

Only fires of 200 ha or more get an entry: smaller ones are not in the lists or the entry totals, but they are in the GWIS yearly series.

Series not comparable from October 2025 onwards: GWIS changed its near-real-time perimeters.

The year in a few sentences

  1. According to Copernicus GWIS, 14,921 hectares burned in Japan in 2025: 1.3 times the average of the other years from 2012 to 2025 (11,126 ha). GWIS figures for 2025 and 2026 are provisional: they are left out of the average and the worst year.

    Copernicus GWIS · See the data

  2. The worst week was 5 March to 11 March: 3,774 hectares burned in seven days, 25% of the year according to Copernicus GWIS.

    Copernicus GWIS · See the data

  3. The largest fire was the Aso fire, which started on 9 March 2025 and burned 5,917 hectares: 36% of the area of the year's 24 fires with a page.

    WorldFires · See the data · Open the fire page

  4. The day of highest danger at a fire this year was 1 March 2025: a Fire Weather Index of 14 (moderate on the EFFIS scale) at the Tochigi fire, calculated by WorldFires from ERA5.

    WorldFires · ERA5 · See the data · Open the fire page

Official burned area
15k ha
Copernicus GWIS
Fires with a page
24
16,366 ha within their perimeters
Largest fire
5,917 ha
Aso · 9 Mar
Highest FWI
14 Moderate
1 Mar · Tochigi

Map of the year

Copernicus GWIS
One circle per fire, sized by its area. Tap one to open its page.

Month by month

Hectares within the perimeters by the month the fire started. Tap a month to see it on the map.

Week by week, against other years

Copernicus GWIS

Cumulative burned area in 2025 over the lowest and highest of each week in the record since 2012, and its average. The bars below show what burned each week. Tap the chart to see a week. The average and the band are the Copernicus GWIS climatology for 2012–2025, which includes 2025 itself.

0 6,152 12k 18k Worst week · 3,774 ha Jan Mar May Jul Sep Nov
2025 average 2012–2025 lowest and highest Hectares each week

Every year since 2012

Copernicus GWIS

Hectares burned per year in the official record. Tap a year to open its yearbook.

2025: 14,921 ha Average of the other years: 11,126 ha

Cite this

Markdown version

Copy the sentences with their source and link. WorldFires data are CC BY 4.0: credit WorldFires and the original source.

- According to Copernicus GWIS, 14,921 hectares burned in Japan in 2025: 1.3 times the average of the other years from 2012 to 2025 (11,126 ha). GWIS figures for 2025 and 2026 are provisional: they are left out of the average and the worst year.
- The worst week was 5 March to 11 March: 3,774 hectares burned in seven days, 25% of the year according to Copernicus GWIS.
- The largest fire was the Aso fire, which started on 9 March 2025 and burned 5,917 hectares: 36% of the area of the year's 24 fires with a page.
- The day of highest danger at a fire this year was 1 March 2025: a Fire Weather Index of 14 (moderate on the EFFIS scale) at the Tochigi fire, calculated by WorldFires from ERA5.

WorldFires, “Wildfires in Japan in 2025”, https://worldfires.org/en/country/japan/2025 (accessed 12 November 2026). Sources: Copernicus GWIS, WorldFires, WorldFires · ERA5.

Fires of 2025, largest first · 24

Burned area in 2025 (Copernicus Land, Sentinel-3)

According to Copernicus Land, 40,871 ha burned in 2025: rank 1 of 7 complete years (1 = the most burned). The average of those years is 27,647 ha.

The area the Sentinel-3 satellite sees burned each month, separate from the fire pages. It is the same source and the same method every year, so years can be compared with each other. It counts everything that burns, including crop and pasture burning, which is why it does not match the fire pages or the official statistics.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec

Where most burned in 2025

  1. Kumamoto 16,487 ha
  2. Hokkaido 5,728 ha
  3. Tochigi 3,576 ha
  4. Oita 3,497 ha
  5. Shizuoka 3,416 ha
  6. Yamagata 1,358 ha
  7. Miyagi 874 ha
  8. Fukushima 703 ha
  9. Fukuoka Prefecture 676 ha
  10. Nagasaki Prefecture 643 ha

The whole series since 2018

Source: Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, “Burnt Area 2018-present (raster 300 m), global, monthly – version 4”, monthly Sentinel-3 product, DOI 10.2909/8fa58061-28ab-49bb-9b77-c26b50733e34. Generated using European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service information; worldfires.org adds up, by country and region, the true area of the 300 m cells where a burn was detected. Latest month published: May 2026. Product page · Methodology

Sources and limits

Fire-page areas are satellite-measured perimeters and may differ from official statistics. The yearly and weekly record is the Copernicus GWIS estimate. The FWI is our own calculation from ERA5 at each fire's location: it is not an official danger warning.

Perimeters: Copernicus EFFIS and GWIS (and MTBS, NIFC or NBAC in North America). Hotspots: NASA FIRMS (VIIRS). Weather: Copernicus ERA5 via Open-Meteo. How it is calculated