İpsala fire, 16 October 2026 İpsala, Enez, Keşan
Satellites first detected fire on 16 October 2026 in İpsala, Türkiye. It has been active for 8 days, with 23 heat detections and an area with fire of about 322 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 3 municipalities.
The power measured by the satellite is low (11.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.
Is it still active?
No detections since 23 Oct 2026, 00:43 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Area with fire
- ≈ 322ha
- rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
- Duration
- 8days
- 16 Oct 2026 – 23 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 16 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 12 MW
- Danger at start
- 25
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 136MW
- sum of detected power
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. Rain came after the fire: 8.6 mm on 13 Oct.
What happened to each town
-
280 ha reached on 16 Oct0.4 %
-
Enez 10,886 inhabitants · 10.7 km from the town28 ha reached on 21 Oct0.1 %
-
Keşan 84,442 inhabitants · 22.5 km from the town14 ha reached on 21 Oct0.0 %
Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Oct | 23.1 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 6 Oct | 23.8 °C | 30 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 7 Oct | 25.0 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 8 Oct | 23.9 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 9 Oct | 24.1 °C | 51 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 10 Oct | 26.2 °C | 48 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 11 Oct | 26.0 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 12 Oct | 22.0 °C | 67 % | 28 km/h | 8.7 mm | Very low 0 |
| 13 Oct | 18.3 °C | 66 % | 54 km/h | 8.6 mm | Very low 0 |
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 11 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 40 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.2 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 · 23Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,198 haEnezAugust 2025 · 2 days · 23 km away
- 848 haAlexandroupolis Αλεξανδρούπολης15 September 2020 · 3 days · 23 km away
- 625 haSoufliou ΣουφλίουOctober 2020 · 2 days · 26 km away
- 254 haSoufliou ΣουφλίουJuly 2021 · 2 days · 26 km away
- 4,604 haSoufliou ΣουφλίουJuly 2022 · 6 days · 32 km away
- 96,610 haAlexandroupolis ΑλεξανδρούποληςAugust 2023 · 24 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the İpsala fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 16 October 2026 to 23 October 2026 (8 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
- How much area did it burn?
- There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 322 hectares with fire (3.2 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: İpsala (280 ha, 0.4 %); Enez (28 ha, 0.1 %); Keşan (14 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the İpsala fire still active?
- No fire detections since 23 Oct 2026, 00:43 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 7.2 km of İpsala. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 26.2 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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
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
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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.