How long did the Barcelos fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (2 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 3 July 2026 (2 days from 2 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 117 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Viatodos, Grimancelos, Minhotães e Monte de Fralães and came within 1.4 km of its centre. 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.

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.

PT · Portugal · 2026-07-02 → 2026-07-03

Barcelos fire, July 2026 Viatodos, Grimancelos, Minhotães e Monte de Fralães, Negreiros e Chavão

Out · last detection 3 Jul 2026, 13:27 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2026 in Viatodos, Grimancelos, Minhotães e Monte de Fralães, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 117 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 71 in Portugal in 2026, of 78.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.3 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: Barcelos · 2016 Póvoa de Lanhoso · 2024 Nogueira, Meixedo e Vilar de Murteda · 2016 Vieira do Minho · 2024

Burnt area: 117ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: ≈ 2days; 2 Jul 2026 – 3 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; freguesias
Started on: 2 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 10; in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Average daily power: 88MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul3 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

3 Jul 2026 · 88 MW · 10

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

Viatodos, Grimancelos, Minhotães e Monte de Fralães 3,744 inhabitants · 1.4 km from the centre where it started

98 ha reached on 3 Jul

7.8 %
Negreiros e Chavão 2,204 inhabitants · 3.4 km from the centre

19 ha reached on 3 Jul

2.7 %

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 forest87 %
Scrub and transitional woodland11 %
Agricultural areas1.7 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area1.0 ha

Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.0 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 2 July 2026 and burned 191 ha (the satellite measured 117 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Barcelos Viatodos 2 July 2026 · 15:07 191 ha · extinguished on 5 July 2026 · cause: arson

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Jun 2026

After · 10 Jul 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 5 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1072 µg/m³

Optical depth0.30

WHO 15

3012345

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 · 10Every 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 Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Barcelos fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (2 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 3 July 2026 (2 days from 2 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 117 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Viatodos, Grimancelos, Minhotães e Monte de Fralães (98 ha, 7.8 %); Negreiros e Chavão (19 ha, 2.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Viatodos, Grimancelos, Minhotães e Monte de Fralães and came within 1.4 km of its centre. 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.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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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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.

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. 10 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with ICNF: 191 official ha against 117 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
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 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.

Where it burned