Kasama fire, 26 August 2026 Kasama
The fire started on 26 August 2026 in Kasama, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 34 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,594 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 40th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 52 in Zambia in 2026, of 610.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kasama · 2016Kasama · 2023Kasama · 2019Kasama · 2021
- Burnt area
- 15,594ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 34days
- 26 Aug 2026 – 28 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 515
- in a single hotspot: 173 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 181MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.6 mm on 2 Oct.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,860 ha in 2016, 4,113 ha in 2017, 6,227 ha in 2018, 4,957 ha in 2019, 3,232 ha in 2020, 7,187 ha in 2021, 4,484 ha in 2022, 4,773 ha in 2023, 121 ha in 2024, 2,949 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,528 ha that had burned before.
- 3,079 ha Kasama fire, September 2016 4,209 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,299 ha Kasama fire, September 2023 3,291 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,271 ha Kasama fire, August 2019 3,852 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,903 ha Kasama fire, September 2021 3,027 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,763 ha Kasama fire, September 2025 3,387 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 520 ha Kasama fire, September 2022 3,995 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 365 ha Kasama fire, August 2021 8,370 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 217 ha Kasama fire, August 2020 4,017 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
-
Kasama where it started15,687 ha reached on 26 Aug1.5 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 28.8 °C | 37 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 27 Aug | 28.4 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 28 Aug | 27.3 °C | 37 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 29 Aug | 28.0 °C | 36 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 30 Aug | 28.7 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 31 Aug | 29.0 °C | 34 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 1 Sept | 28.9 °C | 34 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 2 Sept | 29.4 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 3 Sept | 30.2 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 4 Sept | 31.9 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 5 Sept | 30.4 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 6 Sept | 30.1 °C | 36 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Sept | 29.6 °C | 34 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 8 Sept | 27.1 °C | 37 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 9 Sept | 26.5 °C | 38 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 10 Sept | 27.5 °C | 37 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 11 Sept | 28.7 °C | 34 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Sept | 29.8 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Sept | 30.2 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 14 Sept | 30.0 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Sept | 30.1 °C | 34 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 16 Sept | 30.1 °C | 26 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 17 Sept | 29.0 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 18 Sept | 30.3 °C | 28 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 19 Sept | 30.4 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 20 Sept | 30.9 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 21 Sept | 30.8 °C | 34 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 22 Sept | 29.8 °C | 38 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 37 |
| 23 Sept | 30.6 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 24 Sept | 30.3 °C | 31 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 25 Sept | 30.3 °C | 33 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Sept | 31.2 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Sept | 32.5 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 35 |
| 28 Sept | 32.7 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 29 Sept after | 31.1 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 30 Sept after | 30.2 °C | 32 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 1 Oct after | 29.1 °C | 35 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 2 Oct after | 28.5 °C | 46 % | 31 km/h | 6.6 mm | Low 6 |
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 4 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 87 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 51: 3.4 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 · 515Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kasama fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2026 to 28 September 2026 (34 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2026 to 22 September 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,594 hectares (155.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kasama (15,687 ha, 1.5 %).
- Is the Kasama fire still active?
- No fire detections since 28 Sept 2026, 23:48 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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
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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2026 to 22 September 2026. 515 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.
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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.