El Tarf fire, 25 August 2026 الطارف · Chefia, Zitouna, El Tarf
The fire started on 25 August 2026 in El Tarf, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 6,376 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 11 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,376ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 4days
- 25 Aug 2026 – 28 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 5
- communes
- Started on
- 25 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 164
- in a single hotspot: 516 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.7GW
- 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 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 223 ha in 2016, 597 ha in 2017, 117 ha in 2019, 1,370 ha in 2020, 946 ha in 2021, 659 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,291 ha that had burned before.
- 895 ha Chefia fire, August 2021 2,760 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 689 ha Chefia fire, July 2020 710 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 353 ha El Tarf fire, July 2020 386 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 348 ha El Tarf fire, August 2022 351 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 229 ha Zitouna fire, July 2020 560 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 223 ha El Tarf fire, July 2016 273 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 204 ha Bouteldja fire, August 2022 6,415 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 156 ha El Tarf fire, July 2017 187 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
-
2,938 ha reached on 28 Aug15 %
-
1,375 ha reached on 27 Aug8.5 %
-
1,284 ha reached on 26 Aug11 %
-
785 ha reached on 26 Aug6.8 %
-
8 ha0.1 %
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
- Mixed forest87 %
- Other natural land11 %
- Agricultural areas1.9 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- According to the sources, several fires that ended up merging:
- Aïn Kerma (lugar Sidi Mohamed/Sidi M'hamed) 26 August 2026
- Bouteldja (evacuadas casas y dos parques de ocio) 26 August 2026
- Zitouna / Ezzitouna (35 familias evacuadas) 26 August 2026
- Hammam Beni Salah 27 August 2026
Sources
- Protection civile : Maîtrise totale des feux de forêt à travers plusieurs wilayas du pays — L'Express DZ, 30 August 2026 · official source
- Incendies en Algérie : voici le dernier bilan de la protection civile — Algerie360, 28 August 2026
- Incendies en Algérie : 75 feux toujours en cours — Algerie Eco, 26 August 2026
- Incendies en Algérie : des habitants évacués dans plusieurs wilayas — Interlignes, 26 August 2026
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Aug | 33.6 °C | 36 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Aug | 46.9 °C | 8 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 27 Aug | 47.3 °C | 9 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 28 Aug | 34.0 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 29 Aug after | 41.9 °C | 18 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 30 Aug after | 33.2 °C | 59 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 31 Aug after | 32.8 °C | 54 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 1 Sept after | 34.0 °C | 47 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 2 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 3 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 38 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 4 Sept after | 31.0 °C | 43 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Sept after | 31.6 °C | 47 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 6 Sept after | 33.3 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
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 29 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 445 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 164: 11 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 · 164Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,760 haChefia الشافية10 August 2021 · 4 days · 6 km away
- 2,697 haBuqus بوقوسAugust 2021 · 4 days · 8 km away
- 7,171 haBuqus بوقوس23 July 2017 · 13 days · 10 km away
- 6,415 haBouteldja بوثلجةAugust 2022 · 9 days · 13 km away
- 2,887 haHammam Beni Salah حمام بني صالح15 August 2022 · 4 days · 33 km away
- 3,193 haMedjez Sfa مجاز الصفاءAugust 2022 · 2 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the El Tarf fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (25 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 28 August 2026 (4 days from 25 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 6,376 hectares (63.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 5 municipalities: Chefia (2,938 ha, 15 %); Zitouna (1,375 ha, 8.5 %); El Tarf (1,284 ha, 11 %); Bouteldja (785 ha, 6.8 %); Lac des Oiseaux (8 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire reached the centre of Zitouna: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 47.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (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: 14 · 1021 · 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- 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. 164 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- 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.
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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.