Ibn Badis fire, July 2026 ابن باديس · Ibn Badis
The fire started on 22 July 2026 in Ibn Badis, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 6,045 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the largest fire in Constantine since 2016 (of 31 with a page). Number 12 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,045ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 2days
- 22 Jul 2026 – 23 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 22 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 131
- in a single hotspot: 145 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.9GW
- 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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 27 Jul.
This area had burned before
49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 768 ha in 2017, 338 ha in 2021, 1,892 ha in 2022, 3 ha in 2025.
- 1,860 ha Ibn Badis fire, August 2022 3,593 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 736 ha Ibn Badis fire, July 2017 1,334 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 338 ha El Khroub fire, July 2021 2,637 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 32 ha El Khroub fire, August 2022 2,015 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
-
6,060 ha reached on 22 Jul19 %
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 land42 %
- Agricultural areas36 %
- Mixed forest22 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 2 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- غابة الحاج (Ennahar) · غابة الهداج (El Massa) · forêt d'El Heddadj (El Watan)
Sources
- Quinze incendies en 24 heures dans la wilaya de Constantine : Un embrasement simultané face à une riposte d'envergure — El Watan, 25 July 2026
- حرائق بأربع غابات في قسنطينة — El Massa, 25 July 2026
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Jul | 39.3 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 1.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 23 Jul | 38.9 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 1.3 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Jul after | 35.3 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 40 |
| 25 Jul after | 34.8 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 41 |
| 26 Jul after | 31.3 °C | 30 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 43 |
| 27 Jul after | 26.2 °C | 56 % | 41 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
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 25 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 63 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.1 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 · 131Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,593 haIbn Badis ابن باديسAugust 2022 · 2 days · 3 km away
- 2,637 haEl KhroubJuly 2021 · 3 days · 7 km away
- 3,913 haAin Bouziane عين بوزيانJuly 2026 · 2 days · 27 km away
- 2,491 haAïn Smara عين سمارةAugust 2019 · 5 days · 27 km away
- 2,708 haAïn Smara عين سمارةJuly 2026 · 2 days · 34 km away
- 2,768 haGrarem Gouga القرارم قوقةJuly 2026 · 97 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ibn Badis fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (22 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 July 2026 (2 days from 22 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 6,045 hectares (60.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ibn Badis (6,060 ha, 19 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Ibn Badis and came within 794.1 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
- 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.
- 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. 131 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 2 confirmed sources.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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.