Al Dibab fire, 11 October 2026 Al Dibab, Abyei PCA area
The fire started on 11 October 2026 in Al Dibab, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 89,467 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in West Kordofan since 2016 (of 181 with a page). The largest in Sudan in 2026, of 249.
Compare with…
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 27 Oct 2026, 10:43 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 89,467ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 11 Oct 2026 – 27 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- localities
- Started on
- 11 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 1,389
- in a single hotspot: 141 MW
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 956MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 667 ha in 2016, 217 ha in 2020, 540 ha in 2021, 286 ha in 2022, 115 ha in 2023, 1,544 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,209 ha that had burned before.
- 1,432 ha Abyei PCA area fire, November 2025 66,995 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 540 ha Abyei PCA area fire, November 2021 2,662 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 286 ha Abyei PCA area fire, November 2022 2,482 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 112 ha Abyei PCA area fire, November 2025 7,625 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
-
Al Dibab where it started53,226 ha reached on 13 Oct5.8 %
-
36,775 ha reached on 14 Oct3.5 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 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
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Oct | 40.2 °C | 29 % | 54 km/h | 2.8 mm | High 22 |
| 12 Oct | 36.7 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 13 Oct | 35.1 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 14 Oct | 39.2 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Oct | 39.8 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 16 Oct | 41.4 °C | 13 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 17 Oct | 38.6 °C | 26 % | 26 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 31 |
| 18 Oct | 37.3 °C | 31 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 19 Oct | 40.6 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 20 Oct | 40.9 °C | 19 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Oct | 41.3 °C | 15 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Oct | 41.5 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 23 Oct | 41.0 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 24 Oct | 41.1 °C | 11 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Oct | 41.1 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 26 Oct | 39.3 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 49 |
| 27 Oct | 37.0 °C | 15 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
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 17 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 66 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 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 · 1,389Every 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 Al Dibab fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 October 2026 to 26 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 89,467 hectares (894.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Al Dibab (53,226 ha, 5.8 %); Abyei PCA area (36,775 ha, 3.5 %).
- Is the Al Dibab fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 27 Oct 2026, 10:43 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sudan (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.
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Area: 85,956 → 89,467 ha.
- Area: 77,705 → 85,956 ha.
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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 9 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 October 2026 to 26 October 2026. 1,389 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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 comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.