How long did the Kabalo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2026 to 2 August 2026 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 July 2026 to 2 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,085 hectares (60.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kongolo (4,332 ha, 0.3 %); Kabalo (1,795 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Democratic Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CD · Democratic Republic of the Congo · 2026-07-27 → 2026-08-02

Kabalo fire, 27 July 2026 Kongolo, Kabalo

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2026, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2026 in Kabalo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,085 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 139th largest in Tanganyika since 2016 (of 232 with a page). Number 368 in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2026, of 523.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kongolo · 2019 Kongolo · 2018 Kongolo · 2021 Kongolo · 2026

Burnt area: 6,085ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 27 Jul 2026 – 2 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; territories
Started on: 27 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 173; in a single hotspot: 305 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul2 Aug

Play back 2 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 28 Jul 29 Jul 30 Jul 31 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

35km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,000 ha in 2016, 2,333 ha in 2017, 4,117 ha in 2018, 2,575 ha in 2019, 2,930 ha in 2020, 2,733 ha in 2021, 3,646 ha in 2022, 710 ha in 2023, 1,701 ha in 2024, 3,411 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,107 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (61 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Kongolo

4,332 ha reached on 28 Jul

0.3 %
Kabalo where it started

1,795 ha reached on 27 Jul

0.1 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.51 ha

Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.51 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
27 Jul	34.9 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Jul	34.7 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Jul	32.9 °C	33 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Jul	32.6 °C	39 %	19 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
31 Jul	35.8 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Aug	34.8 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
2 Aug	34.6 °C	21 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
3 Aug after	34.8 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
4 Aug after	35.4 °C	24 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Aug after	35.2 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
6 Aug after	35.5 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Aug after	35.0 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Aug after	34.0 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
9 Aug after	34.5 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Aug after	35.8 °C	25 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
11 Aug after	34.4 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
12 Aug after	34.2 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jul 2026

After · 9 Aug 2026

Before After

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 3 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 151 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 122: 8.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak151 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM10156 µg/m³

Optical depth1.71

WHO 15

2526272829303112345

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 · 173Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Democratic Republic of the Congo ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kabalo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2026 to 2 August 2026 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 July 2026 to 2 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,085 hectares (60.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kongolo (4,332 ha, 0.3 %); Kabalo (1,795 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Democratic Republic of the Congo (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 28 July 2026 → 27 July 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 July 2026 to 2 August 2026. 173 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.

Where it burned