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Kabongo fire, 1 August 2026 Kabongo

Out · last detection 8 Aug 2026, 11:57 UTC

The fire started on 1 August 2026 in Kabongo, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,087 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 96th largest in Haut-Lomami since 2016 (of 172 with a page). Number 367 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2026, of 523.

Burnt area
6,087ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
1 Aug 2026 – 8 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
territories
Started on
1 Aug
2026
Heat detections
44
in a single hotspot: 179 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Aug8 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

12678

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
32km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,835 ha in 2016, 3,214 ha in 2017, 3,468 ha in 2018, 3,977 ha in 2019, 1,739 ha in 2020, 4,557 ha in 2021, 1,149 ha in 2022, 1,361 ha in 2023, 2,048 ha in 2024, 778 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,643 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Kabongo where it started
    6,136 ha reached on 1 Aug
    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)
29 Jul 32.3 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Jul 30.3 °C 37 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Jul 32.5 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 31.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Aug 32.1 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Aug 32.4 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Aug 32.0 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Aug 33.1 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug 32.7 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Aug 33.3 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug 33.0 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
9 Aug after 32.5 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Aug after 34.0 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Aug after 31.3 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
12 Aug after 33.3 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Aug after 33.5 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Aug after 32.7 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Aug after 32.1 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Aug after 32.5 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Aug after 32.7 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Aug after 33.0 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jul 2026
After · 15 Aug 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 8 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 161 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 112: 7.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak161 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10164 µg/m³
Optical depth1.65
27282930311234567891011
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 · 44Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kabongo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 August 2026 and 8 August 2026: 8 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 6,087 hectares (60.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kabongo (6,136 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.