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Dilolo fire, 6 August 2026 Dilolo

Out · last detection 17 Aug 2026, 12:27 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2026 in Dilolo, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,896 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Lualaba since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 185 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2026, of 523.

Burnt area
9,896ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
6 Aug 2026 – 17 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
6 Aug
2026
Heat detections
202
in a single hotspot: 204 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug17 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

67910111214151617

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
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 669 ha in 2016, 857 ha in 2017, 62 ha in 2018, 1,501 ha in 2019, 244 ha in 2020, 2,132 ha in 2021, 1,547 ha in 2022, 1,637 ha in 2023, 1,808 ha in 2024, 2,504 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,355 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Dilolo where it started
    9,973 ha reached on 5 Aug
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
5 Aug 29.5 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Aug 30.0 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Aug 30.4 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Aug 30.3 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Aug 30.3 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Aug 31.7 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Aug 31.5 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Aug 30.2 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Aug 30.7 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Aug 30.9 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Aug 29.5 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Aug 29.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Aug 30.1 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Aug after 30.9 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Aug after 31.3 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Aug after 30.9 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Aug after 31.7 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Aug after 32.2 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Aug after 32.5 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Aug after 32.6 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
25 Aug after 33.2 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Aug after 31.8 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Aug after 33.4 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Aug after 32.6 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Aug after 32.0 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Aug after 32.4 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Aug after 33.6 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Sept after 34.6 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Sept after 32.4 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Sept after 34.2 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jul 2026
After · 24 Aug 2026

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 21 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 136 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 89: 5.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak136 µg/m³
Days over the guideline25 days
PM10142 µg/m³
Optical depth1.69
3456789101112131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 202Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dilolo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 August 2026 and 17 August 2026: 12 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 9,896 hectares (99.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dilolo (9,973 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (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

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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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.