Grad Metković fire, July 2026 Grad Metković
The fire started on 7 July 2026 in Grad Metković, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 268 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 14th largest in Dubrovnik-Neretva since 2016 (of 27 with a page). Number 11 in Croatia in 2026, of 25.
The power measured by the satellite is low (21.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 268ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 1day
- 7 Jul 2026 – 7 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 7 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 15
- in a single hotspot: 21 MW
- Average daily power
- 140MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
7 Jul 2026 · 140 MW · 15
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 112 ha in 2017, 112 ha in 2019, 201 ha in 2020, 164 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 263 ha that had burned before.
- 112 ha Čapljina fire, August 2017 425 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 112 ha Čapljina fire, January 2019 192 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 100 ha Čapljina fire, September 2020 154 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 37 ha Grad Metković fire, March 2022 134 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Grad Metković where it started127 ha reached on 7 Jul2.5 %
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
- Other natural land97 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub1.8 %
- Agricultural areas1.1 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 99 %
- ZEPA + LIC Delta Neretve HR1000031 · HR5000031
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
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 8 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 23 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 · 15Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Grad Metković fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (7 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 7 July 2026 (1 day from 7 July 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 268 hectares (2.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Grad Metković (127 ha, 2.5 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Croatia (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: 112 · 193 · 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; 2 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. 15 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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 ADM2 (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.