How long did the Chiengi fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 July 2026 and 22 August 2026: 29 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 29,839 hectares (298.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chiengi (29,479 ha, 7.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

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

ZM · Zambia · 2026-07-25 → 2026-08-22

Chiengi fire, 25 July 2026 Chiengi

Out · last detection 23 Aug 2026, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 25 July 2026 in Chiengi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 29,839 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 40th largest in Luapula since 2016 (of 533 with a page). Number 24 in Zambia in 2026, of 613.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chiengi · 2018 Chiengi · 2017 Chiengi · 2017 Chiengi · 2021

Burnt area: 29,839ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 29days; 25 Jul 2026 – 22 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 25 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 1,147; in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 280MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jul22 Aug

Play back 23 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 29 Jul 2 Aug 8 Aug 12 Aug 13 Aug 16 Aug 20 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

45km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,762 ha in 2016, 7,727 ha in 2017, 7,664 ha in 2018, 4,310 ha in 2019, 5,398 ha in 2020, 4,405 ha in 2021, 4,062 ha in 2022, 4,176 ha in 2023, 988 ha in 2024, 1,796 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 20,153 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (298 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

Chiengi where it started

29,479 ha reached on 23 Jul

7.7 %

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 area38 ha

Residents≈ 3,900

Inside the perimeter there were about 38 hectares of built-up land and about 3,900 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

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	Danger (FWI)
23 Jul	30.6 °C	40 %	30 km/h	High 30
24 Jul	30.4 °C	36 %	30 km/h	High 30
25 Jul	29.9 °C	30 %	34 km/h	High 32
26 Jul	29.1 °C	35 %	38 km/h	High 34
27 Jul	28.4 °C	37 %	31 km/h	High 31
28 Jul	29.4 °C	37 %	24 km/h	High 29
29 Jul	30.2 °C	34 %	29 km/h	High 30
30 Jul	30.0 °C	36 %	25 km/h	High 30
31 Jul	29.6 °C	29 %	35 km/h	High 33
1 Aug	28.2 °C	24 %	36 km/h	High 36
2 Aug	28.8 °C	33 %	26 km/h	High 31
3 Aug	28.4 °C	37 %	27 km/h	High 30
4 Aug	29.1 °C	39 %	30 km/h	High 30
5 Aug	29.5 °C	39 %	27 km/h	High 29
6 Aug	30.1 °C	38 %	28 km/h	High 29
7 Aug	30.6 °C	39 %	31 km/h	High 31
8 Aug	30.9 °C	37 %	36 km/h	High 33
9 Aug	30.9 °C	35 %	27 km/h	High 30
10 Aug	32.8 °C	28 %	28 km/h	High 32
11 Aug	33.0 °C	26 %	26 km/h	High 32
12 Aug	32.5 °C	19 %	35 km/h	Very high 40
13 Aug	30.4 °C	28 %	45 km/h	Very high 44
14 Aug	28.8 °C	39 %	39 km/h	High 35
15 Aug	28.4 °C	32 %	38 km/h	High 35
16 Aug	29.0 °C	32 %	33 km/h	High 32
17 Aug	29.7 °C	32 %	31 km/h	High 32
18 Aug	30.5 °C	28 %	30 km/h	High 32
19 Aug	30.2 °C	26 %	35 km/h	High 35
20 Aug	29.8 °C	30 %	31 km/h	High 34
21 Aug	30.2 °C	30 %	36 km/h	High 36
22 Aug	31.2 °C	29 %	31 km/h	High 34
23 Aug after	31.8 °C	30 %	32 km/h	High 34
24 Aug after	31.8 °C	33 %	38 km/h	High 37
25 Aug after	31.4 °C	36 %	32 km/h	High 34
26 Aug after	32.1 °C	31 %	38 km/h	High 36
27 Aug after	32.5 °C	32 %	44 km/h	Very high 38
28 Aug after	31.1 °C	34 %	43 km/h	Very high 39
29 Aug after	31.2 °C	33 %	39 km/h	High 37
30 Aug after	31.9 °C	28 %	40 km/h	High 38
31 Aug after	32.7 °C	29 %	42 km/h	Very high 38
1 Sept after	32.8 °C	29 %	40 km/h	High 38
2 Sept after	33.1 °C	30 %	37 km/h	High 37
3 Sept after	33.6 °C	27 %	35 km/h	High 36
4 Sept after	34.7 °C	27 %	28 km/h	High 34
5 Sept after	33.6 °C	33 %	19 km/h	High 32
6 Sept after	33.1 °C	28 %	31 km/h	High 35
7 Sept after	33.4 °C	28 %	40 km/h	Very high 39
8 Sept after	31.8 °C	29 %	44 km/h	Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Jul 2026

After · 29 Aug 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 11 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 142 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 91: 6.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak142 µg/m³

Days over the guideline43 days

PM10147 µg/m³

Optical depth0.93

WHO 15

2122232425262728293031123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311

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 · 1,147Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chiengi fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 July 2026 and 22 August 2026: 29 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 29,839 hectares (298.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chiengi (29,479 ha, 7.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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 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.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,147 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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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