Skip to content
worldfires
AO · Angola · →

Ganda fire, August 2026 Ganda

Out · last detection 26 Aug 2026, 12:59 UTC

The fire started on 17 August 2026 in Ganda, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,465 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 234 in Angola in 2026, of 486.

Burnt area
7,465ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
17 Aug 2026 – 25 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
17 Aug
2026
Heat detections
157
in a single hotspot: 74 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Aug25 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1920212223242526

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
50km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 366 ha in 2016, 1,265 ha in 2017, 1,714 ha in 2019, 2,491 ha in 2020, 949 ha in 2021, 946 ha in 2022, 157 ha in 2023, 2,241 ha in 2024, 463 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,449 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Ganda where it started
    7,498 ha reached on 10 Aug
    1.6 %

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)
10 Aug 33.4 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Aug 33.4 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Aug 32.8 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Aug 33.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Aug 33.9 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Aug 33.7 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Aug 32.6 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Aug 32.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Aug 33.5 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Aug 34.3 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Aug 34.5 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Aug 32.9 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Aug 33.7 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Aug 34.9 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Aug 35.0 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Aug 33.8 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Aug after 34.9 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Aug after 36.2 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Aug after 34.1 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Aug after 33.3 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Aug after 33.8 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Aug after 29.9 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Sept after 33.0 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Sept after 33.5 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Sept after 31.1 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Sept after 29.2 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept after 29.9 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Aug 2026
After · 1 Sept 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 22 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 150 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 78: 5.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak150 µg/m³
Days over the guideline22 days
PM10154 µg/m³
Optical depth1.01
891011121314151617181920212223242526272829
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 · 157Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ganda fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 August 2026 and 25 August 2026: 9 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 7,465 hectares (74.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ganda (7,498 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 (Public Domain). 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.