Boukombe fire, 3 January 2026 Tanguiéta, Boukombe, Toucountouna
The fire started on 3 January 2026 in Boukombe, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,185 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 67th largest in Atakora since 2016 (of 523 with a page). Number 11 in Benin in 2026, of 102.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,185ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 3 Jan 2026 – 10 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 3 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 103
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Average daily power
- 46MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,000 ha in 2016, 997 ha in 2017, 684 ha in 2020, 2,172 ha in 2022, 885 ha in 2023, 1,056 ha in 2024, 160 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,147 ha that had burned before.
- 3,000 ha Tanguiéta fire, December 2016 5,207 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,172 ha Tanguiéta fire, December 2022 2,968 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,056 ha Boukombe fire, December 2024 1,100 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 885 ha Tanguiéta fire, December 2023 1,634 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 829 ha Tanguiéta fire, December 2017 2,334 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 684 ha Boukombe fire, January 2020 1,188 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 168 ha Toucountouna fire, November 2017 1,336 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 160 ha Boukombe fire, December 2025 1,034 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
-
2,489 ha0.4 %
-
Boukombe where it started1,878 ha1.9 %
-
847 ha0.8 %
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.
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 11 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 92: 6.1 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 · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,968 haTanguiéta27 December 2022 · 5 days · 1 km away
- 5,207 haTanguiéta20 December 2016 · 15 days · 2 km away
- 2,334 haTanguiéta29 December 2017 · 8 days · 5 km away
- 1,844 haTanguiéta27 December 2024 · 6 days · 34 km away
- 1,704 haMatéri23 December 2024 · 9 days · 37 km away
- 4,229 haMatériJanuary 2022 · 11 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Boukombe fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2026 and 10 January 2026: 8 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,185 hectares (51.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Tanguiéta (2,489 ha, 0.4 %); Boukombe (1,878 ha, 1.9 %); Toucountouna (847 ha, 0.8 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Benin (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.
- Start date: 28 December 2025 → 3 January 2026.
- Name: Tanguiéta → Boukombe.
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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 (Public Domain). 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.