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ML · Mali · –

Djélébou fire, 25 February 2026 Djélébou

Out · last detection 28 Feb 2026, 02:51 UTC

The fire started on 25 February 2026 in Djélébou, Mali, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,376 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 119 in Mali in 2026, of 167.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
2,376ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
25 Feb 2026 – 28 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
25 Feb
2026
Heat detections
44
in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start
62
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
228MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Feb28 Feb
28 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Feb 2026 · 406 MW · 25 28 Feb 2026 · 50 MW · 19
27 Feb 28 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
32km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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

  1. Djélébou where it started
    2,389 ha reached on 27 Feb
    2.7 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)

Started with Very dry air: 73 % of the area in Mali

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
25 Feb 40.0 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
26 Feb 40.3 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
27 Feb 37.5 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
28 Feb 32.9 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
1 Mar after 32.7 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 Mar after 34.0 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Mar after 33.8 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Mar after 35.8 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Mar after 36.8 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
6 Mar after 36.7 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
7 Mar after 38.6 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
8 Mar after 39.7 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Mar after 40.2 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Mar after 40.5 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Feb 2026
After · 7 Mar 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 24 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 176 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 122: 8.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak176 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10998 µg/m³
Optical depth1.11
24 Feb26 Feb28 Feb2 Mar
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 · 44Every 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 Mali

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Djélébou fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 February 2026 to 28 February 2026 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 February 2026 to 28 February 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,376 hectares (23.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Djélébou (2,389 ha, 2.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mali (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 26 February 2026 → 25 February 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 February 2026 to 28 February 2026. 44 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (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.