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Kabongo fire, June 2026 Kabongo

Out · last detection 27 Jun 2026, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 15 June 2026 in Kabongo, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,474 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 76th largest in Haut-Lomami since 2016 (of 172 with a page). Number 336 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2026, of 523.

Burnt area
6,474ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
15 Jun 2026 – 26 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
15 Jun
2026
Heat detections
127
in a single hotspot: 215 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

27 Jun 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jun26 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

15161718192021222324252627

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
41km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,358 ha in 2017, 719 ha in 2018, 2,177 ha in 2019, 1,090 ha in 2020, 1,377 ha in 2021, 1,774 ha in 2022, 2,351 ha in 2023, 1,602 ha in 2024, 755 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,436 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Kabongo where it started
    6,518 ha reached on 10 Jun
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. 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)
15 Jun 32.1 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Jun 31.3 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Jun 32.2 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jun 31.7 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jun 32.2 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jun 31.9 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Jun 30.8 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Jun 31.1 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Jun 31.0 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Jun 31.4 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Jun 31.6 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jun 32.2 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Jun after 31.3 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Jun after 31.3 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Jun after 31.5 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Jun after 32.2 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Jul after 32.9 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Jul after 32.9 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Jul after 33.3 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Jul after 32.4 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Jul after 32.2 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Jul after 31.6 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jun 2026
After · 3 Jul 2026

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 24 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak64 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM1066 µg/m³
Optical depth0.66
1314151617181920212223242526272829
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 · 127Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kabongo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 June 2026 and 26 June 2026: 12 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 6,474 hectares (64.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kabongo (6,518 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (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

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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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.