How long did the Balama fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 August 2026 to 3 September 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2026 to 28 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,127 hectares (41.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Balama (3,876 ha, 0.7 %); Marrupa (272 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

MZ · Mozambique · 2026-08-15 → 2026-09-03

Balama fire, 15 August 2026 Balama, Marrupa

Out · last detection 3 Sept 2026, 10:28 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2026 in Balama, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,127 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 53th largest in Cabo Delgado since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 304 in Mozambique in 2026, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Balama · 2026 Balama · 2019 Balama · 2023 Marrupa · 2025

Burnt area: 4,127ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 15 Aug 2026 – 3 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 15 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 87; in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 44MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug3 Sept

Play back 3 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug 28 Aug 1 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

45km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 61 ha in 2024, 935 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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

Balama where it started

3,876 ha reached on 16 Aug

0.7 %
Marrupa

272 ha reached on 23 Aug

0.0 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
15 Aug	25.5 °C	40 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
16 Aug	26.4 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
17 Aug	26.7 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
18 Aug	26.9 °C	38 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
19 Aug	27.7 °C	37 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
20 Aug	28.5 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 25
21 Aug	30.2 °C	45 %	38 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 20
22 Aug	31.8 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 Aug	31.8 °C	25 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
24 Aug	29.7 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
25 Aug	30.2 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
26 Aug	28.9 °C	42 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
27 Aug	29.4 °C	37 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Aug	30.2 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
29 Aug	28.6 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
30 Aug	30.2 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
31 Aug	30.3 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
1 Sept	30.9 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
2 Sept	30.2 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
3 Sept	30.0 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
4 Sept after	30.4 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
5 Sept after	28.5 °C	42 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Sept after	31.2 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Sept after	30.6 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Sept after	27.9 °C	38 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Sept after	28.1 °C	45 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
10 Sept after	30.6 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33
11 Sept after	31.6 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
12 Sept after	31.3 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
13 Sept after	31.3 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Aug 2026

After · 10 Sept 2026

Before After

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 24 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 88 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak88 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1093 µg/m³

Optical depth1.24

WHO 15

141516171819202122232425262728293031123456

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 · 87Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Balama fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 August 2026 to 3 September 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2026 to 28 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,127 hectares (41.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Balama (3,876 ha, 0.7 %); Marrupa (272 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 16 August 2026 → 15 August 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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 August 2026 to 28 August 2026. 87 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 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.

Where it burned