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Agrigento fire, 22 July 2026 Agrigento, Realmonte, Siculiana

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2026, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2026 in Agrigento, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 741 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Agrigento since 2016 (of 289 with a page). Number 27 in Italy in 2026, of 231.

The power measured by the satellite is low (18.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Siculiana · 2022Agrigento · 2024Cattolica Eraclea · 2025Santa Elisabetta · 2026

Burnt area
741ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 2days
22 Jul 2026 – 23 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
22 Jul
2026
Heat detections
24
in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
72MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul23 Jul
23 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jul 2026 · 47 MW · 12 23 Jul 2026 · 98 MW · 12
22 Jul 23 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high
22km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 77 ha in 2020, 355 ha in 2022, 119 ha in 2024, 32 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 422 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.5% of the area of London (7.4 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Agrigento 55,512 inhabitants · 11.3 km from the centre where it started
    502 ha reached on 22 Jul
    2.1 %
  2. Realmonte 4,378 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the centre
    152 ha reached on 23 Jul
    7.4 %
  3. Siculiana 4,161 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre
    81 ha reached on 23 Jul
    2.0 %
  4. Porto Empedocle 15,600 inhabitants · 7.2 km from the centre
    8 ha reached on 23 Jul
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Agricultural areas69 %
  • Other natural land31 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.95 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.95 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
22 Jul 39.0 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jul 32.0 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jul after 37.2 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
25 Jul after 29.4 °C 55 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Jul after 29.8 °C 53 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
27 Jul after 32.7 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jul after 31.1 °C 60 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
29 Jul after 31.8 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
30 Jul after 31.8 °C 41 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
31 Jul after 35.4 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Aug after 38.0 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Aug after 33.5 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 15 Jul 2026
After · 30 Jul 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 25 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 77 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak77 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10111 µg/m³
Optical depth0.73
20212223242526
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 24Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Agrigento fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (22 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 July 2026 (2 days from 22 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 741 hectares (7.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Agrigento (502 ha, 2.1 %); Realmonte (152 ha, 7.4 %); Siculiana (81 ha, 2.0 %); Porto Empedocle (8 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 0.8 km of the centre of Siculiana, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 22 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Italy (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 112 · 1515 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112 · 1515.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 24 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.