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Arouca fire, July 2025 Real, Canelas e Espiunca, Santa Eulália

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2025, 13:18 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2025 in Real, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 6,555 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 11 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 28 July 2025 at 13:15 and declared extinguished on 28 July 2025.

Number 7 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.

Burnt area
6,555ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
28 Jul 2025 – 1 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit
11
freguesias
Started on
28 Jul
2025
Heat detections
466
in a single hotspot: 394 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
11.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

1 Aug 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul1 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

282930311

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
35km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,098 ha in 2016, 4 ha in 2017, 85 ha in 2019, 26 ha in 2023, 112 ha in 2024.

What happened to each town

  1. Real 0.2 km from the town where it started
    2,151 ha reached on 29 Jul
    65 %
  2. Canelas e Espiunca 1,065 inhabitants · 0.1 km from the town
    1,775 ha reached on 28 Jul
    50 %
  3. Santa Eulália 0.7 km from the town
    1,105 ha reached on 29 Jul
    48 %
  4. Nespereira 1,695 inhabitants · 0.7 km from the town
    402 ha reached on 29 Jul
    11 %
  5. Alvarenga 1,057 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the town
    395 ha reached on 28 Jul
    10 %
  6. Tropeço 1,086 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the town
    355 ha reached on 30 Jul
    20 %
  7. Fornelos 590 inhabitants · 12.5 km from the town
    173 ha reached on 29 Jul
    17 %
  8. União das Freguesias de Sobrado e Bairros 2,784 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the town
    129 ha reached on 29 Jul
    9.1 %
  9. Travanca 712 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the town
    36 ha reached on 30 Jul
    7.3 %
  10. União das Freguesias de Raiva, Pedorido e Paraíso 2,312 inhabitants · 5.9 km from the town
    34 ha reached on 30 Jul
    0.7 %
  11. União das Freguesias de Arouca e Burgo 5,124 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the town
    5 ha
    0.3 %

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

What burned

  • Scrub and transitional woodland62 %
  • Broadleaved forest31 %
  • Mixed forest3.3 %
  • Agricultural areas3.2 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 21 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

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

Official record

According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 5,891 ha (the satellite measured 6,555 ha).

ICNF (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas). This is the agency’s operational record: its figures may be revised when the year’s statistics are closed.

Checked against the press

Checked on 30 September 2026

We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:

Also known as
Incêndio de Arouca · incêndio Arouca/Castelo de Paiva/Cinfães
Declared under control (not yet extinguished): 1 August 2025

Sources

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)
28 Jul 31.5 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jul 31.6 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Jul 32.8 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jul 33.9 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Aug 32.2 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Aug after 32.6 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Aug after 36.2 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Aug after 34.8 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Aug after 38.2 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Aug after 31.4 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Aug after 29.7 °C 46 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Aug after 28.9 °C 45 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
9 Aug after 32.7 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Aug after 34.6 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Aug after 32.5 °C 27 % 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.

Before · 21 Jul 2025
After · 8 Aug 2025

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 2 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 496 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 224: 15 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak496 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10748 µg/m³
Optical depth1.13
2627282930311234
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 · 466Every 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 Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Arouca fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 28 July 2025 and 1 August 2025: 5 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 28 July 2025 at 13:15 and declared extinguished on 28 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 6,555 hectares (65.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 11 municipalities: Real (2,151 ha, 65 %); Canelas e Espiunca (1,775 ha, 50 %); Santa Eulália (1,105 ha, 48 %); Nespereira (402 ha, 11 %); Alvarenga (395 ha, 10 %); Tropeço (355 ha, 20 %); Fornelos (173 ha, 17 %); União das Freguesias de Sobrado e Bairros (129 ha, 9.1 %); Travanca (36 ha, 7.3 %); União das Freguesias de Raiva, Pedorido e Paraíso (34 ha, 0.7 %); União das Freguesias de Arouca e Burgo (5 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.1 km of Canelas e Espiunca. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Portugal (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

Satellite cross-check

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
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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.

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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.