Cherven Bryag fire, August 2026 Червен бряг · Cherven Bryag, Roman, Byala Slatina
The fire started on 23 August 2026 in Cherven Bryag, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 637 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 5th largest in Pleven since 2016 (of 23 with a page). Number 3 in Bulgaria in 2026, of 24.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 637ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 2days
- 23 Aug 2026 – 24 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 23 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 16
- in a single hotspot: 53 MW
- Danger at start
- 42
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 104MW
- 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 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 368 ha in 2016, 141 ha in 2017, 467 ha in 2019, 629 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 629 ha that had burned before.
- 629 ha Cherven Bryag fire, July 2024 2,625 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 467 ha Cherven Bryag fire, September 2019 864 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 368 ha Cherven Bryag fire, July 2016 888 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 83 ha Cherven Bryag fire, August 2017 115 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 58 ha Roman fire, August 2017 166 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).
Sofia boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, Wikimedia (Public Domain).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
418 ha reached on 23 Aug1.0 %
-
161 ha reached on 23 Aug0.5 %
-
57 ha reached on 23 Aug0.1 %
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
- Scrub and transitional woodland32 %
- Other natural land29 %
- Agricultural areas27 %
- Broadleaved forest13 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 99 %
- LIC Karlukovo BG0001014
- ZEPA Karlukovski karst BG0000332
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Aug | 33.7 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Aug | 31.4 °C | 36 % | 21 km/h | 2.6 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 25 Aug after | 34.4 °C | 31 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 26 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 40 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 27 Aug after | 31.6 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 28 Aug after | 25.1 °C | 50 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 24 |
| 29 Aug after | 29.7 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 30 Aug after | 32.0 °C | 35 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 31 Aug after | 34.0 °C | 27 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 1 Sept after | 33.8 °C | 28 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 2 Sept after | 33.0 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 3 Sept after | 31.2 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 33 |
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 26 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 16Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,625 haCherven Bryag Червен бряг16 July 2024 · 5 days · 1 km away
- 888 haCherven Bryag Червен брягJuly 2016 · 5 days · 1 km away
- 864 haCherven Bryag Червен бряг7 September 2019 · 2 days · 1 km away
- 789 haRoman Роман16 September 2019 · 3 days · 7 km away
- 663 haByala Slatina Бяла СлатинаAugust 2026 · 2 days · 12 km away
- 624 haRoman РоманAugust 2024 · 4 days · 16 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cherven Bryag fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (23 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 24 August 2026 (2 days from 23 August 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 637 hectares (6.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cherven Bryag (418 ha, 1.0 %); Roman (161 ha, 0.5 %); Byala Slatina (57 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 9.2 km of the centre of Roman, the closest of the areas it touched. 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.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bulgaria (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
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.
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: 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. 16 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.
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 ADM2 (Public Domain). 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.