Ghanzi fire, 18 October 2026 Ghanzi
The fire started on 18 October 2026 in Ghanzi, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 30,675 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 15th largest in Ghanzi since 2016 (of 460 with a page). Number 7 in Botswana in 2026, of 215.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Ghanzi · 2023Ghanzi · 2020Ghanzi · 2026Ghanzi · 2022
- Burnt area
- 30,675ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 18 Oct 2026 – 26 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 18 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 668
- in a single hotspot: 277 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.6GW
- 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 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 28 ha in 2024.
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
-
Ghanzi where it started30,904 ha reached on 18 Oct0.3 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.49 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Oct | 34.8 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 19 Oct | 34.0 °C | 19 % | 40 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 47 |
| 20 Oct | 34.0 °C | 5 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 21 Oct | 35.0 °C | 9 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 22 Oct | 35.7 °C | 10 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 23 Oct | 35.2 °C | 11 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 24 Oct | 34.7 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 Oct | 35.4 °C | 14 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 26 Oct | 36.5 °C | 15 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 27 Oct after | 34.3 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Oct after | 35.8 °C | 7 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Oct after | 34.5 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 30 Oct after | 33.3 °C | 16 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
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 16 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 668Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,165 haGhanzi25 August 2023 · 3 days · 22 km away
- 9,862 haGhanzi26 September 2020 · 5 days · 25 km away
- 42,046 haGhanzi20 August 2026 · 10 days · 27 km away
- 11,723 haGhanzi11 August 2022 · 4 days · 28 km away
- 26,080 haGhanzi28 July 2022 · 6 days · 35 km away
- 21,753 haGhanzi14 October 2021 · 3 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ghanzi fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 October 2026 and 26 October 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 30,675 hectares (306.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ghanzi (30,904 ha, 0.3 %).
- Is the Ghanzi fire still active?
- No fire detections since 26 Oct 2026, 00:03 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Botswana (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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 22 October 2026 → 26 October 2026.
- Area: 29,339 → 30,675 ha.
- Area: 27,317 → 29,339 ha.
- Area: 3,764 → 27,317 ha.
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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 668 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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 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.