Ain Charchar fire, 17 July 2026 عين شرشار · Es Sebt, Ain Charchar, Roknia
The fire started on 17 July 2026 in Ain Charchar, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 14,609 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 7 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 14,609ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 6days
- 17 Jul 2026 – 22 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 5
- communes
- Started on
- 17 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 527
- in a single hotspot: 374 MW
- Danger at start
- 59
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 4.6GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 889 ha in 2017, 175 ha in 2019, 399 ha in 2020, 125 ha in 2021, 117 ha in 2022, 194 ha in 2023, 6 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,559 ha that had burned before.
- 284 ha Ain Charchar fire, July 2017 303 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 205 ha Ain Charchar fire, July 2020 205 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 142 ha Bekkouche Lakhdar fire, July 2020 156 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 128 ha Ain Charchar fire, July 2023 130 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 120 ha Bekkouche Lakhdar fire, July 2017 129 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 112 ha Ain Charchar fire, September 2021 112 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 110 ha Es Sebt fire, August 2017 110 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 92 ha Bekkouche Lakhdar fire, August 2019 137 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
4,729 ha reached on 19 Jul19 %
-
3,420 ha reached on 17 Jul30 %
-
2,951 ha reached on 19 Jul15 %
-
2,905 ha reached on 18 Jul19 %
-
631 ha reached on 19 Jul3.7 %
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
- Mixed forest60 %
- Other natural land28 %
- Agricultural areas11 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 1,100 residents (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
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Feux de Skikda · حرائق سكيكدة · Incendies Es Sebt / Essebt / السبت
- According to the sources, several fires that ended up merging:
- Aïn Kechra 17 July 2026
- Cheraïa / Echraïa (Lakbiba, Hmayed, Aïn Ghebal) 17 July 2026
- Aïn Charchar 17 July 2026
- Es Sebt 17 July 2026
- Azzaba 17 July 2026
- Bekkouche Lakhdar / Djendel Saadi Mohamed / Aïn Bouziane 17 July 2026
Sources
- Feux de forêt : 42 incendies maîtrisés, un dernier foyer résiste à Skikda — Awras, 28 July 2026
- سكيكدة: تواصل معركة إخماد حرائق الغابات.. 12 حريقا مسجلا — Echark Elyoum, 24 July 2026
- 82 حريقا في 24 ولاية.. صور فضائية ترصد مشهد النيران في الجزائر — Al Jazeera (ar), 22 July 2026
- Bras de fer entre les sapeurs-pompiers et les incendies — La Nouvelle République, 22 July 2026
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Jul | 42.6 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 18 Jul | 41.4 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.6 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 19 Jul | 43.1 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 20 Jul | 40.9 °C | 19 % | 31 km/h | 0.8 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Jul | 43.2 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.5 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 22 Jul | 39.7 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 23 Jul after | 38.3 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 24 Jul after | 35.5 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 25 Jul after | 35.1 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 26 Jul after | 32.3 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Jul after | 29.3 °C | 52 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 27 |
| 28 Jul after | 30.4 °C | 46 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 29 Jul after | 32.9 °C | 39 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Jul after | 33.1 °C | 40 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 31 Jul after | 34.6 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 1 Aug after | 35.1 °C | 36 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 21 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 71 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 527Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ain Charchar fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (17 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 22 July 2026 (6 days from 17 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 14,609 hectares (146.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 5 municipalities: Es Sebt (4,729 ha, 19 %); Ain Charchar (3,420 ha, 30 %); Roknia (2,951 ha, 15 %); Bekkouche Lakhdar (2,905 ha, 19 %); Azzaba (631 ha, 3.7 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 1.5 km of the centre of Roknia, 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 43.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (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: 14 · 1021 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 18 July 2026 → 22 July 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- 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. 527 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- 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.
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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.